A Thousand Ways to Say Goodbye
by MegaBadBunny
Summary: He finds her again after "Journey's End," and he just can't let her go. (written as part of timepetalsprompt's Pay it Forward Promo, for zoebelle9; angst, fluff, some adventure, and just a smidge of dark!Doctor/Time Lord Victorious. Teen for language and adult themes; Adult/Mature version can be found under the same name on Tumblr, Teaspoon, or AO3)
1. Part One

It's completely an accident, the first time it happens.

(He's over 900 years old, after all; Time Lord or not, a bloke's bound to forget a few things with all that information rattling about, isn't he?)

Fresh off a romp in 1851 London, he's left feeling just a little lonesome—just a little bit, only ever a little bit, can't let that pesky feeling burrow too deep or it will eat away until there's nothing left. And another bout of unmarked time frittered away on the TARDIS, with only his own thoughts for company, sounds about as appealing as covering himself in petrol and running facefirst into a bonfire. So he sets a randomized course for somewhere in the vicinity of Saturn's crowded leisure colonies, sometime between eight hundred and two thousand years from now.

(Sometime, any time, out of time. It doesn't matter. It isn't as if he's got anyone he's accountable to, to explain what he's doing with all these empty hours.)

The time rotor grumbles under his command, and he doesn't spare it any thought other than to wrinkle his nose and press harder. The TARDIS is getting old, just like he is, though at least she's managing to escape the downward spiral of growing sentimentality. At least she doesn't keep opening her mouth thinking that another doctor or a feisty redhead will be there to hear what she has to say.

(At least she isn't plagued by the still-lingering traces of a certain bubbly, laughter-filled blonde.)

He has just congratulated himself on a smooth landing in the dusty space market, followed by an even smoother transaction in which, despite having his arms full of mechanical bobs and bits (might as well buy some spare pieces for that grumbling time rotor while he's on shore leave, right?), he has managed to both hand over his crumpled bills and accept his food without so much as a crumb dropped or a drop dribbled, items shifting in his arms in a subtle but tricky juggle that no one but him will appreciate, when it happens.

"Well, I was gonna ask if you needed help, but it sort of looks like you've got everything covered," a familiar voice drawls behind him, and every single one of the manly hairs on the back of his manly hands and arms and neck stands on end.

Feet shift, pivoting him in place, his body turning before he can stop it, moving to look at her despite all of the approximately thirteen thousand alarm bells sounding in his head right now.

There she is, standing in front of him, blonde hair and broad grin and just a little too much eye makeup. Rose Tyler.

Each and every detail of this moment isolates in painful clarity, the relativity of time hellbent on proving itself through the Doctor's sudden hyper-awareness of the metallic taste of the recycled air and the station humming under his feet as the planet and its colonies careen through space at 9.69 kilometers per second, the tinny sounds of street-musicians playing for coins half a block away, the breeze ruffling his jacket lapels and the tiny flyaway strands of Rose's hair. Rose Tyler, here, in this universe, smiling up at him in a blue tee-shirt and denim skirt like nothing in the world could ever be wrong.

Is he hallucinating right now?

His blood rushes in his ears and a million questions rush into his brain, each of them vying for attention on the tip of his tongue, but he can't even manage to eke out so much as her name before his food slips from his hand and lands on the ground with a loud _splat_.

Rose laughs and cringes at the mess in front of her. "Sorry! Didn't figure I'd startle you like that—"

"What are you doing here?" the Doctor asks, words tumbling out in a hurried cascade. "Is everything all right back home?" (He tries not to choke on the last word, on the knowledge that her home is miles and universes away.) "Did something happen to the other one?" (He doesn't know how to refer to the metacrisis Doctor, how he refers to himself.)

Rose stares at him. "'The other' who?" she asks. "Who are you talking about?"

When he doesn't immediately respond, because "Who the hell do you think I'm talking about?" seems a tad harsh but his brain can't think of anything else to say, something seems to shift in Rose. She steps back to take a proper look at him—a good, long, proper look—and even though his eyes are locked on her face, wondering about the _how_ and the _why_ and especially the _how_ of her being here, right here, right now, after everything, the Doctor realizes that this is not the Rose that he stranded on a beach in a parallel world for a second time just a few days ago. No, her hair is too short for that, her face still just a little too round, her expression open and full of questions instead of closed and guarded. She's exactly the way he remembers.

This is the Rose that he hasn't stranded yet.

As far as personal timeline paradoxical screw-ups go, this one is _spectacular_.

"You're different," Rose murmurs.

"You're the same," the Doctor answers before he can stop himself. (Before he can run away, which is what he really, really, really needs to do, but his feet are anchors and his ship is moored.)

Rose chuckles. "Well, of course I am, aren't I?"

It occurs to the Doctor that at some point he stopped gaping and started beaming at her like an idiot. An idiot that's going to scramble both of their timelines like a fork twisted in a nerve cluster.

"So, are we ready to go, then?" Rose asks.

The Doctor does a mental rewind. They're in a space market on the Forty-Third Colony of Great Saturn, in the year 3050, give or take a few months. His younger self is nowhere to be seen. Rose's shirt, bearing a rendering of a cat from an art nouveau poster, is one that went missing, ooh, about three weeks after his regeneration into this form. Three weeks, relatively speaking.

(This is precisely why the Academy so adamantly pushes personal timeline avoidance plotting as an educational requirement, but then again, the Doctor didn't exactly pass that course with flying colors.)

"I left you to get some parts," he remembers aloud. "But you couldn't come with, because of the proprietors' religious superstitions regarding humans. So I left you in a safe section of the market to entertain yourself."

Now she's really eying him. "Are you all right, Doctor? Because all of this happened not fifteen minutes ago, and you're looking at me like you've just seen a ghost."

A memory rises to the surface, a vision of Rose on a windswept beach saying all-too-similar words years ago. (Or is it a year from now?) The Doctor stalls. He can feel timelines tightening around him, slithering into his cranium and strangling his two hearts, warning him about the dire consequences if he makes so much as a single step out of line.

"Everything's fine," he forces himself to say. "I'll be back in about thirty minutes. Thirty, and we'll be on our way."

Rose nods at the gadgets and gears in his arms. "Haven't you already got everything you need?"

He loosens his hold and materials fall to the ground in a loud crash that draws irritated looks from several passersby. "Nope," he says, plastering a smile on his face. "This is all rubbish. It's not what I need at all. In fact, it's so far removed from what I need, that it isn't even on the same continent. I need to go find more things. Different things. Other things..."

The more he rambles, the more suspicion crawls across Rose's face and settles in the creases of her brow. "Is this a weird regeneration thing? Should I be worried about you?" she asks, her hands twisting nervously.

The Doctor takes some deep breaths and pushes his anxiety down. Deep down. As far as it will go. He can't afford to alert her suspicions any more than he already has.

If she figures it out...if she knows...if she tries to warn his younger self...

"Yes," he says, "and no. Yes it's a weird regeneration thing; no, you shouldn't be bothered about it. Don't worry, Rose." He draws in a deep inhale, and steels himself. "I'll be right back for you."

It's only sort of a lie.

He turns to leave before she can protest, trainers stirring up dust as they slap against the ground, picking up in speed the further he moves away from her, until he's running full-pelt toward the TARDIS buried in a back alley a few blocks away. It doesn't matter that members of the crowd protest, that Rose can see him running; all that matters is that she doesn't realize when this is for him, or, more importantly, why he was looking at her like that.

( _Am I ever gonna see you again?_ )

( _You can't_ )

His hearts race in a way that has nothing to do with his running.

* * *

The second time, it's a less a matter of an accident than it is of unbridled curiosity.

(What will happen if he sees her again?)

He's just saved a ship full of anxious Bharengan tourists in the year 7074 from an almost certain death-by-space-pirates—doesn't he deserve just a little pat on the back for a job well-done? He so rarely asks for anything for himself. He's currently riding the high of that victory, even if it is just the tiniest bit spoiled by the fact that one of the passengers didn't make it.

(She didn't even have a chance to tell her wife goodbye.)

The Doctor diverts his trajectory from Earth and pilots the TARDIS to Kepler-438b ("Or Earth 2.0," he once told Rose with a wink). This is probably the safest time to visit Rose again, while she's exploring a charming forested area and staying away from atmospheres that could burst her little human lungs. And he knows for a fact that he left her here for a full nineteen hours—knows because he was supposed to be back in two, and she was sure to outline the difference for him. (And protests of "But I had to help the methane revolution of '099!" were only met with a scowl.)

He tells himself he just wants to give her a proper farewell, even if she won't recognize it.

The Doctor lands in a wooded grove, indistinguishable from any on Earth if it wasn't for the white-and-silver leaves whispering gently in the wind, and he can just make out Rose up ahead, talking on her mobile as she strolls through the forest. She notices him instantly, and the corners of her mouth turn up in a broad smile before she ends her call and runs toward him.

The sight of her, smiling and happy and _here_ , hits him with all the gracefulness of a speeding lorry.

(Oh, he realizes with a sinking feeling, he should go. He should really, really go—)

But Rose is too close for him to turn back now without arousing her suspicion, and besides, she's already grabbed his hand and their fingers have laced together and he's not about to pull away. "About time," Rose says. He's already seven hours overdue as far as she's concerned. "What took you so long?"

She does a double-take upon seeing the look on his face; his grin must be ridiculous. "And why are you smiling like that?" she laughs.

 _It's just good to see you is all_ is what he wants to say. Or maybe even _I missed you_. Instead, what comes out of his mouth is, "I can't stay."

"What do you mean? Aren't we going now?"

He forces himself to meet her gaze; she'll know he's lying otherwise. "Soon," he promises. She's rubbing her thumb over his, a little detail he'd almost misplaced amidst mourning the loss of everything else. It's silly and wonderful and he promises never to forget it again. "The business on the mining station isn't quite attended-to yet. I just..."

 _Wanted to see you. Wanted to give you one last hug. Wanted to say goodbye. Am a completely selfish sod who's all-too-willing to endanger the fabric of time itself just to see you again._

"Doctor?" Rose asks. "Did something happen? On the station?"

"No, not at all, fairly standard as far as revolutions go. Why do you ask?"

She worries her tongue between her teeth. "I dunno. Just doesn't seem like you to check up on me, is all."

Her words twist in him like a knife in his gut. The Doctor steps back, pushes out a laugh, ruffles his hair with one hand. "Am I really so cold-hearted as that?"

"Oh yes," Rose mocks. "You're a terribly cold, cold man who enjoys trips to the space-zoo and cries during Pixar films."

"I said I'm cold, not a monster," the Doctor protests, and they both laugh. Her laughter is just as bubbly and effusive as he recalls, spilling out of her like she can't help herself; he'd preserve it in amber if he could.

He desperately wants to stall for time, but he knows the longer he draws this out, the worse it will be.

(Wouldn't it be sort of worth it, though?)

"Well, I really should be going," he says as brightly as he can manage. "This revolution isn't going to solve itself, if memory serves. The lead general is a brilliant charismatic, but he simply hasn't got the brains for strategy. Someone needs to nudge him in the direction of his lovely savvy sister."

"And that someone's gonna be you," Rose smiles.

"Yeah," he mutters. "It usually is."

This is when he should leave, he knows. Leave on a high note, with this last happy memory, worlds better than watching her kiss his hand-grown copy on a beach a universe away and leaving without saying goodbye.

He needs to say it now. He draws in a deep breath. It's now or never. _Say it. Just say it._

(Really, shouldn't he at least ask for one last hug, though? Never mind the suspicion at the back of his head that if he does that, he'll never want to let go.)

"Well," he says, suddenly awkward. "That's it, then. See you around!"

The Doctor turns to leave, cursing himself for his cowardice _again_ , but he hears a soft _hey_ behind him and before he knows it, Rose is tugging on his wrist and pulling him into a hug. She throws her arms around his neck and he pulls her in without even thinking. It's an automatic impulse; he can't help it. Arms circle and hands press and bodies collide, pieces fitting together like a puzzle falling into place.

He remembers the feel of her _exactly_. Remembers just how she fits against him, recalls how every other hug, just like this one, is just a little too tight and lingers just a little too long to be strictly _just-between-friends_. He knows he can't afford to lose himself in this moment, can feel the almost-wrongness of this small timeline infraction buzzing gently in the background, but he takes just a second to commit to memory the candy-fruit scent of her shampoo and the way his knuckles curl into the small of her back.

"Really, though," Rose whispers against his neck; her breath is soft and warm and it's almost enough to make him shudder. "What's wrong?"

His arms tighten around her. It's all still very familiar, and it would be so very easy to pretend.

"Nothing," he lies. "Just wanted to see you, is all."

"Big ol' softie," Rose teases.

He smiles into her hair. She's more right than she knows; he really is getting sentimental in his old age. Farewells get harder and loneliness grows deeper and he doesn't want to leave but his time sense is aching like a migraine in the back of his skull.

It's a warning. If he stays, something will change that shouldn't, that didn't. He can't let that happen, no matter how much he wants to.

He steps away and drinks in one last look, memorizing any and every tiny facet of information about her that he can, while he still can—the exact shade of her bottle-blonde hair, the tiny upturn of her nose, the sweep of her eyelashes framing warm brown eyes. The fine lines around her mouth that will deepen into laughter lines someday, in some other universe. The sweetheart shape of pink lips that he should have kissed.

"See you later then, I guess," Rose shrugs, and the Doctor really wishes that was true for him.

He wishes his smile was less sad for her.

"Goodbye, Rose," he says.

If she's still worried, if she senses the heaviness hiding under his voice, he doesn't know. He turns and leaves before he is tempted to stay, or worse, to take her with him. Because he is a Time Lord, and as much as he hates it, as much as it rankles in his veins and leaves a sour taste in his mouth and makes him feel like a creature howling behind a cage of dusty and archaic rules, this is his duty: to uphold the laws of time over everything else. Over anything he might want for himself. No matter what.

Besides—he got to see her one last time.

It will have to be good enough.


	2. Part Two

Of course, "one last time" is never really _quite_ good enough, is it?

Holed up in the TARDIS library, the Doctor realizes that despite his efforts to distract himself from the events of several weeks ago, adventures and near-misses and ridiculously complicated plots all brought upon himself in an effort to forget it all, he's reread the same line approximately thirteen times now, and still has no idea what it says.

 _The thing that irks me most is this shattered prison, after all. I'm tired, tired of being enclosed here_

He can't decide if he should congratulate himself on his self-control, or hate himself for it.

 _I'm tired, tired of being enclosed here_

He should probably be proud, or at the very least, satisfied. Mastery of all circumstances, including oneself, is a tenet ingrained in Gallifreyans from infancy. Self-control, cerebral understanding, measured emotions, a devotion to logic, and, most importantly, a duty to uphold the laws of time—this is what it means to be a Time Lord.

He left Rose as soon as he was able to make himself. He did the right thing.

 _I'm tired_

…but what if he didn't?

 _I'm wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there_

There were no Reapers, there was no rift, and there is no warning tingling faintly in the back of his mind any longer; there's nothing to indicate that he did any lasting damage during their meeting. He even managed to avoid running into a younger copy of himself—within a thirty-minute time window, no less.

 _not seeing it dimly through tears_

This was hardly the only time they'd briefly parted ways, for one reason or another. Who is to say that he never visited her during those times? Where is it written that he can't see her again?

 _and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart, but really with it, and in it_

Where is it written that he has to be alone?

 _and yearning_

He drops the book and leaves it there.

* * *

She may only have a limited sentience, and she may not express it in as many words—or, indeed, any words at all—but the TARDIS does _not_ like crossing the Doctor's personal timeline. He can feel her protesting, walls groaning and gears churning and glass column oozing out a sickly green hue. The Doctor pets the console reassuringly, rotating the temporal conduit array as the ship re-materializes.

"I know what I'm doing," he promises. "It's just one more trip. Just the one."

Curious, the Doctor has never heard the TARDIS make a sound so much like a disbelieving sigh before.

After scouring his memory for each and every instant he ever had to leave Rose on her own for any reason—not including the few times he deposited her with her mother for the weekend, he's already stolen a year from her, any more would be excessive—he has decided that the next point at which they briefly separated in his personal chronology is probably the best time to visit. It's the easiest way for him to keep track, and the easiest way to prevent her from becoming confused. He has a two-day window in which to visit her on Tharma-X, during an adventure where he might have been just the tiniest bit imprisoned for insulting their High Command.

(Really, he ought to have known better; it's hardly the first planet where he's been arrested for being rude.)

But Tharmaian prison isn't bad as far as prisons go, and he'd told Rose not to worry about rescuing him; he'd probably be released before either of them could override the security controls, anyway. The Doctor remembers cursing the facility's triple-deadlock seal at the time, but now, he'd kiss it if he could.

(Of course, if he's being completely honest, there are other things he'd much rather kiss, but that's not going to happen. No matter how much he might want it.)

He finds Rose sitting at the Tharmaian equivalent of a pub, sharing drinks with a fellow who's just a little too pretty and just a tad too interested in everything she has to say, but the Doctor is pleased to note that as soon as Rose's eyes land on him, her pretty-boy drinking buddy is completely forgotten.

"It's a prison break, then?" Rose asks conspiratorially, leaning over the bar.

"Maybe I got out on good behavior," the Doctor suggests, sitting down next to her.

Rose just laughs at him.

* * *

 _Temporal amnesiac displacement_. He's got it all figured out.

Because as this venture wears on, as the two of them share drinks and laugh and generally draw grumpy looks from the other patrons in the pub, he's remembering these little times, these little instances, where Rose would give him the strangest looks, or refer to conversations he couldn't place, and now he knows why. It was not, as he initially suspected, Rose playing a strange and circuitous prank on him, nor was it the side-effects of the Bad Wolf phenomenon mucking about with her quantum balance. He simply couldn't place it because it hadn't happened yet, for him.

Naturally, Rose can't know that. But he's confident that if he rattles off enough technobabble in an attempt to explain his supposed memory loss, her eyes will glaze over and she won't question it.

He polishes off his drink and he's just about to stun her with his brilliantly-crafted diagnosis when she tilts her head and says, "It's your hair."

His fingers still on his glass. "What?"

"It's your hair that's different. Did you get a haircut when you got out of prison?"

"Yes?" he offers in response. (Klaxons start sounding in his brain, timelines straining again and telling him to _run run run run away before she figures it out run run RUN_.)

(Because temporal amnesiac displacement won't quite explain the regular variations in hair lengths, will it?)

(Does the outcome of this delicate timeline pendulum really pivot on Rose's observations of his _hair_?)

Rose doesn't look like she quite believes him. He doesn't blame her. As far as poker faces go, he might as well be screaming that he's got nothing but twos and sevens. But at least this explains that time she kept asking about spontaneous extreme hair regrowth.

The Doctor scrambles about for something to say. "Do you like it?" he asks.

"Do I like what?"

"The hair."

"It's different."

He can't stop himself. "Good different or bad different?"

She can't either. She grins. "Just different."

This seems like as good a time for a diversion as any. The Doctor deposits a crumpled-up bill in the tip jar (hoping it's from the right time period, won't do the bartender any good if it's from the year 8092, will it?) and, pushing up and away, he holds his hand out for Rose to take. When she looks at his hand, but doesn't respond otherwise, he wriggles his fingers.

"Shall we?"

Rose doesn't move. "Are you from my future?" she asks.

He blinks. He opens his mouth. Nothing comes out, not even a lie. His mouth closes again, his teeth snapping together with a loud _click_.

(But really, he thinks; he shouldn't be surprised. Rose is no fool, and his hair is rather splendid. He finds himself irrationally hating it all of a sudden. Traitorous beautiful Time Lord genetics.)

"Why do you ask?" he wonders, trying and failing to keep his voice casual.

"Because you look different sometimes, and you keep acting like you haven't seen me in ages, and then you don't remember any of it," Rose says slowly. "And your hand can't seem to decide whether it's got a scar or not."

The Doctor looks down at the hand in question. Certain enough, there's a tiny silver crescent-shaped scar there, puckered edges glistening in the low light of the pub and giving him away. It was quite the nasty little cut, once upon a time, and Martha had stitched it up for him on the fly. She'd done such a good job it had never occurred to him to use the dermal regenerator to fix it. Now he's kicking himself.

This is what he gets for indulging in emotions and sentimentality. A lack of preparedness, a suspicious Rose, an end to his good time, and one hell of an impending time sense headache.

"I don't suppose you'd buy temporal amnesiac displacement as an excuse?" the Doctor asks, without even a single shred of hope that she'll say yes.

Rose shakes her head no, and wraps her arms around her body protectively.

The Doctor sighs. "Well," he says, rubbing at the back of his skull, "I had sort of hoped it would take you a bit longer to figure it out."

"Am I dead?" Rose asks. "In the future? Is that why you keep coming back to see me?"

"You know I can't tell you things like that," he replies softly.

"Then why are you doing this?"

That's a really good question, and one he knows she deserves an answer for. He looks away instead, pats his fingers in the ring of condensation that has accumulated around the base of his glass. His fingers tap the bar with a wet _smack_.

He weighs the merits of being honest, for once. Not just with her, but with himself, too.

"Doctor?" Rose tries, and he hates how worried she sounds.

"Sorry," he blurts out. He shakes himself. "This was a mistake. I'm sorry."

He runs out of there before she can stop him.

* * *

The Doctor swears to himself that he'll never do it again, buries himself in adventure after adventure and plot after plot in an effort to forget the temptation. Replacing one distraction for another. He feels a deep and abiding understanding for addicts that he's never understood before, a renewed appreciation for the struggles of those who can't even seem to find normalcy without _just one more hit_. And he certainly has a greater comprehension of the disgust and self-loathing that trickles in afterward.

Then he visits a desert world, and he learns he's about to die.

It's a strange feeling, knowing he's going to die soon. If he had to pick one word for it, it would be _crushing_. He feels the weight pressing in on his chest, behind his eyes. All around him. It feels like the entire universe is caving in. For all the times he's saved the bloody place, for all the things he's given up for it, the world is going to compact and pressurize him until there's nothing left but dust.

He's never asked for much of anything, but is this really his reward? To fade out of existence, old and bitter and alone?

But impending death has a funny way of galvanizing people, and nowhere does it say he's only allowed to feel one thing. Certainly, _crushing_ applies. So does _reckless_.

"You haven't died," he tells Rose in a neon garden in the year 789/berum/g, local time. He tells her that before either of them can say anything else, before she can even tell him hello. "You're alive and well. And happy. Very happy." At least he hopes that part is true.

"But I'm not with you anymore?" Rose asks, crestfallen.

"I didn't say that."

"Then why do you keep visiting me like this?"

He takes a deep breath. Extreme caution must be observed if he wants to get through this without causing significant damage to the timelines. (He's reckless, but he's not stupid.) This means he can only be so honest with her right now.

"I miss you," he admits.

Honest enough. It's just about the most intimate thing he's ever said to her, and his guts squirm with nervousness, and he struggles not to swallow so obviously that she can see it.

Rose's cheeks tinge just a tiny bit with pink. "Really?" she asks, surprised.

"Really. You, erm...you've been spending a bit more time with your mother these days," the Doctor tells her, carefully plucking the truths she can and can't know—because surely she must spend time with her mother in the other universe, right? "And, well, you know me. Not exactly domesticated, am I?"

"Why, though? Is Mum all right?"

He's breaking so many rules right now. But he's finding it a little difficult to care too much. If _the universe_ didn't want him to do this, then maybe _the universe_ shouldn't be punishing him with an untimely and unnecessary death.

The Doctor nods. "Perfectly fine. I imagine you're just helping out with the baby."

Rose's mouth falls open. "Mum has a _baby_? With _who_?"

"Nope!" the Doctor rebuts cheerfully, popping the last syllable. "This crystal ball has read its last. I'm only saying anything so that you don't worry, or do something stupid. And I can trust you to keep this information to yourself, right?"

"Yes." Rose nods vigorously. "Absolutely! You can trust me!"

The Doctor's time sense fades to a dull thrum in the background. Pieces are falling back together as they should; Rose, and by extension, the universe, must be happy enough with his explanation to stop any kind of traumatic time-space fluxes from taking place. She won't go running to his younger self to warn him about Cybermen and a pair of levers in an empty white room. Tension eases from the Doctor's shoulders and he allows himself to relax just a little bit.

It's a lot harder to feel like he's dying when she's around.

"By the way," Rose ventures, a shy smile brightening up her face, "Thank you. For trusting me."

"No problem." He offers his arm and she takes it, threading her fingers together in the crook of his elbow. "Now, has anyone ever given you a tour while regaling the history of the Five Neon Gardens of Urdun Vry?"

"Nope," she replies with a grin, "But I have a feeling you're about to."

She's not wrong.


	3. Part Three

They fall into something of a routine. The Doctor visits Rose between his own adventures and quests, spacing out their encounters as long as he can. Sometimes a few weeks pass, for him; other times, it's only a few days.

He drops by for a visit on Tralion, peering over Rose's shoulder as she sifts through data in a seventy-eighth century hall of records. (She flirts with the guard, a pretty boy humanoid who is all-too-eager for a spot of female attention and grants them access to the vaunted and forbidden Grey Files with a grin and a wink; the Doctor's eye twitches and he says nothing, but later the guard will notice that his midday treat has mysteriously disappeared, and the Doctor will have a suspicious crumb of something chocolate on his collar.) A few weeks after that, the Doctor spends a morning with Rose on a ghium-mining station battened on the moon of X-375, both of them laughing while they hedge bets on the local jabber-race. (It would be an abuse of the Doctor's time-traveling privileges to give Rose any tips on the outcome, but since she has already brilliantly discovered the location of the stolen casket, he might give her a little nudge in the right direction as a reward and a much-belated thank-you.)

Then he drops by on Rose in London, present-day in her personal timeline, fresh off her first adventure in a parallel world.

He remembers that she disappeared for a few days, when she asked to visit her mum. At the time, he had thought she wanted space from him, and she does, in a fashion; she is not, however, averse to spending time with his current self, and he buys her a long-owed basket of reciprocal chips at her favorite chippy.

Rose eats the food with a little less gusto than usual, the ghost of Mickey weighing heavy on her mind, even if his name remains unspoken. She doesn't bring him up, so the Doctor doesn't either, and they spend two days roaming around London instead. Rose plays the tour guide for once, dragging him around town and pointing out her favorite places, while his younger self putters about impatiently in the TARDIS just a few blocks away.

The Doctor doesn't envy him, especially when Rose pecks a quick kiss on his cheek before they part ways. He can feel the press of her lips on his skin for what seems like hours afterward.

For a long time, the Doctor regretted all of these instances that he left Rose on her own, separations necessitated by environments or species incompatible with humans for one reason or another, or instances where they drifted apart while investigating this thing or that. All of it, he thought for a long while, was time spent apart that could have been spent better together. But now he looks at it as a small gift, like maybe all of reality isn't completely conspiring against him for once.

Well, all of reality except Rose, that is. He's starting to suspect that she might secretly enjoy these clandestine meetings away from his younger self. That would explain why she suddenly stopped protesting the times he had to leave her behind.

One day, the Doctor journeys to Destex Magora, an undeveloped planet whose surface is approximately 85% water. With any luck, the Doctor has managed to land somewhere on the other 15%. He swings the door open and peers out—yes, that's a blue sky and an even bluer-sanded beach beneath his feet, Magorian crystals ground into a fine dust that could almost pass for sand; yes, his younger self is nowhere to be seen, negotiating some trade dispute or other on a less-solid expanse of planet, and yes, that is Rose Tyler lying on a towel several meters away, her body stretched out and slowly turning pink and clad in nothing but a swimsuit that would get her banned on a goodly number of planets.

It should be noted that Time Lords, for the last few millennia now, are not programmed to correlate physical beauty with sexual attraction or reproduction. Physical beauty is too subjective to be trusted with such things, and procreation is largely engineered, based on important physical and mental compatibility in an effort to produce the healthiest, most intelligent, most discerning offspring possible. After all, such a long-lived species can't just go reproducing willy-nilly and populating the universe with 5 billion nigh-immortal spawn, so with what few children they do produce, they need to make it count.

It should also be noted that absolutely none of this is going through the Doctor's head right now; it seems to have been replaced with something that feels just the smallest bit like longing, and a deep appreciation for twenty-first century swimsuit styles.

"There you are," Rose hums happily, pushing oversized sunglasses to the top of her head. "Glad you got here when you did—I don't much fancy turning into a lobster!"

"Sorry?" the Doctor asks, sauntering toward her. His feet kick up tiny puffs of blue sand and his hands wedge themselves safely in his coat-pockets.

Rose taps the bottle of sunscreen lying next to her. "Do you mind?"

The Doctor hesitates. This feels like a trap. A very, very pleasant trap, one involving warmth and curves and touching and silky-soft skin beneath his hands, but a trap nonetheless.

"Not at all," he hears himself saying cheerfully. He can't really blame his mouth; it seems to be a little smarter than he is at the moment. And his hands seem to have a mind of their own as well, fingers pushing cool lotion on overheated flesh, gliding across the hills and valleys of Rose's shoulders and back and legs. The Doctor is sure not to linger—doesn't want to overstay his welcome—but he holds back a grin at the appreciative little noises that escape Rose every now and again.

"You're gonna put me to sleep," she yawns, but she doesn't seem too upset, and the Doctor doesn't stop until every inch of her is good and covered.

(Almost every inch. Distracted by a lazy smile she sends his way over her shoulder, he misses a spot near her left heel. It becomes a red blotch in the shape of a constellation in Cosmos Redshift 7, and the Doctor insists it was on-purpose, an artist's flourish; Rose just rolls her eyes and laughs at him and hisses through her teeth when she pulls her socks back on.)

Sunburns aside, the Doctor is very careful to keep Rose away from anything that could harm her during these little interludes. Their usual adventures give way to strolls and talks and (carefully-monitored) trips to the pub, or whatever passes for a pub on whatever planet they're on. It's a little odd at first, since their relationship has been so defined by world-saving, by heart-pounding escapades and heroic ventures; there were always the quiet moments in-between, but this is different, and they both know it.

Not bad different. Just different.

But it would hardly do for her to die at this time—if Rose warning his younger self about the future could cause as much damage as his instinct tells him it would, then the Doctor can't even imagine the catastrophic time-storm that would occur if Rose died, especially with so many of their later activities chronicled as fixed points on so many different worlds. So this means no daring escapes, no side-trips in the TARDIS, no grabbing her hand and _run-run-running_.

It does not, however, mean they can't do anything fun. And at this precise moment, "fun" just so happens to be an elegant gala. It may be a gala on a world three hundred lightyears and seven thousand years away from home as far as Rose is concerned, but largely, this sort of thing remains unvaried between worlds, the Doctor has found. And twenty-first century women enjoy that sort of thing, right? Or at least he suspects this particular twenty-first century woman would.

(Although no gala, however elegant, is fancy enough to make him switch out his Chucks for anything else; he's got on a tuxedo, and that will have to be good enough. Rose doesn't complain—she ditches her pumps halfway through the evening anyway, choosing to dance barefoot over the smooth marbleglass floor.)

The Doctor had no intentions of dancing, had mostly assumed they'd attend for niblets and an excuse to dress up—who doesn't like a good dress-up every once in a while?—but when Rose pulled him to his feet, it occurred to him that this was probably a silly assumption to make. So now they're dancing, hands clasped around shoulders and waists and each other, the Doctor leading Rose in a dance whose movements she doesn't know, but is happy to imitate. But the precise movements hardly matter. Her dress is long enough to hide any missteps she might make, skirt swirling and _swishing_ and sparkling, and anyone who might be watching would be distracted by her smile anyway, not to mention the _very_ flattering fit of said dress.

Well. Most of the other attendants are quadrupedal, blue, and reptilian, so maybe that last part's just him.

"So what's the occasion here?" Rose wonders while they dance.

"Didn't I say? We're attending the coronation of the Bhyllic Proto-Empress."

"You did say that," Rose laughs, "but I meant more—with us. You know?"

The Doctor shrugs. "I originally brought you here because I thought you'd enjoy the sunsets. Spectacular prisms, those. Can't beat a three-sun sunset. Pity I couldn't watch it with you at the time, really, but I think I'm just about to solve the mystery of the Menagerie Break right about…" He looks down at his (nonexistent) watch, tilts his head this way and that. "...now. The fact that there's also a coronation going on is just a happy coincidence."

"Is it?"

The song changes and their dance evolves with it, spirited gavotte switching out for something more like a waltz as the tune grows more soulful and romantic and oh my, this is going to be a problem, isn't it?

"Why don't you just say what you're getting at?" the Doctor asks, instead of changing the subject like he knows he should. He's dancing, both literally and figuratively, on a dangerous bit of precipice.

Rose's tongue darts out to wet her lips. "Is this a date?"

The Doctor considers. "I see no evidence to suggest that it is," he says carefully.

"That's funny, cos most of the time, when a bloke buys you a dress, takes you to a fancy party and dances with you, and you're talking about sunsets and things—normally, that means it's a date," Rose replies. "So, to me, it seems like there's a lot of evidence."

"Maybe there is," the Doctor concedes, and if his grip on her waist tightens by just a millimeter, then so be it. "Though I'd be careful not to confuse correlation with causation."

He cinches his grip a little tighter, brings her in a little closer. So that his lips are right by her ear. "However," he murmurs, and he can feel her pulse racing in her fingertips at his proximity, "Your hypothesis might be correct in this particular example."

"Good," Rose breathes. "But…"

"But?"

"Just saying, it seems like, if it _is_ a date—sort of seems like there should be a kiss, doesn't it?"

It is only by the grace of some unknown god that he does not trip over his own feet. This might be a good time to rethink his stance on religion. "Does it?" the Doctor asks.

Fingers clench in his tuxedo jacket, nails squeaking quietly against the wool. "Is that—do we do that sort of thing, in the future?"

"In a manner of speaking," the Doctor replies; he imagines that Rose and his duplicate are all-too-happy to fraternize in such a way. (Actually, no, he tries not to imagine that, tries not to think about it at all, because there's nothing quite like being painfully, hatefully jealous of your own self.)

"So," Rose draws out, and now her fingers tap a nervous rhythm on his shoulder, "Are you saying I should save that for a younger you? Is it bad to go out of order with this sort of thing?"

The Doctor waits for his instincts to agree with her, for his time sense to wrap around his consciousness like a snake coiling tighter and tighter until its prey suffocates, but there's nothing. It's just the two of them, dancing amongst fairy-lights and aliens under a three-sun dusk. The familiar feeling of gut-twisting apprehension and anxiety is mysteriously absent.

Probably he should rely on common sense instead. But there goes that niggling recklessness again.

"Well, we've never exactly done things in the proper order, have we?" he muses aloud.

"I did move in with you the day we met," Rose agrees.

"And then it was off to see the end of the world, then all the way back to Dickens."

"Your standard first date stuff," Rose teases.

The Doctor pretends to scoff. "I'll have you know, that in certain ancient time-traveling cultures, influential points in history are an extremely popular courtship destina—"

—and suddenly his mouth is meeting resistance as feet arch up and the distance between them closes and soft lips press gently against his. Eyes shutter closed and hands grip tighter and legs still to a halt. He's too stunned to move, frozen by an onslaught of fight-or-flight chemicals and disbelief and the sound of his blood thundering in his ears as a thrill shudders through him from head to toe. It's surprising, but not entirely unpleasant.

He might not be an expert, but he's fairly certain he's being kissed.

"—tion," his voice finishes when Rose pulls away. She watches him with wide eyes and a bitten lower lip, all at once bold and shy. Searching his face for a response. He thanks evolution for the gift of a respiratory bypass; he can't imagine how embarrassed he'd be if he was out of breath over so small a gesture. His head is spinning a bit as it is.

Over 900 years old and things like a kiss from Rose Tyler can still shock him somehow.

The Doctor scrambles for something to say. "Don't you normally wait for someone to finish talking before you do something like that?"

"We don't do things in the proper order, remember?" Rose laughs nervously, tucking her hair behind one ear.

"In that case, how do we anticipate what comes next?"

Her cheeks flush and her tongue catches in her teeth when she smiles, a flash of pink amongst the white. "I think we just make it up as we go."

"Good plan," the Doctor nods. "The no-plan plan. I'm fond of that one."

"How fond?"

He smiles. He's not talking about the plan any more; he's pretty sure she knows that. "Very."

Rose lets out a breathless laugh and pushes up on her toes to plant another kiss. A feeling like floating suffuses his being, like he'll drift away into the clouds if nothing tethers him down, and the Doctor clasps her one-handed by the waist, drawing her body flush against his, cupping the back of her head to take control. An electric charge simmers on the air and other partygoers dance around them in time to the music, glancing their way and muttering in disapproval at these humanoids joined at the mouths, but it doesn't matter because beneath that noise and the murmur of rain lazily drumming on the roof, he can hear Rose too, a sound halfway between a hum and a whimper building in the back of her throat. His hand slides down her back just a little too low for public decency and her mouth opens just a little bit in surprise and he chases after, his tongue sliding over hers.

Rose pushes him away to catch her breath, chest heaving and eyelashes fluttering madly. "Oh," is all she says when her lungs fill up again.

"I'm sorry," he blurts out reflexively.

Rose laughs. "Are you really?" she asks.

"No, not really," he admits. "If you're really sorry, that means you won't do it again, doesn't it?"

Before she can respond, he pulls her back in, crushing her mouth to his and swallowing any words that might emerge from her lips. Some little part of him faintly protests—is this too much? Is he taking advantage? What if she doesn't want this, what if it's too intense?—but she isn't exactly a passive participant, fitting her body to his and drawing his lower lip between her teeth. Her hands trace up his neck, fingers tangling in his hair, nails scraping lightly over his scalp, and amidst the hearts-pounding and the heat pooling in his chest, he wonders just how much Rose lingered in that long-ago snog courtesy of Cassandra.

Rose drapes her arms around his neck in a lazy embrace, her chest heaving against his. "I don't know about you," she says, her voice quiet and husky, her breath soft along his jawline, "but. Erm. I could stand to continue all this elsewhere."

The silent request suspends in what little air exists between them, waiting for the Doctor to do something with it.

He plays for time, replying with a non-answer in the form of a soft kiss, his eyes closed while his brain calculates. He almost surrenders. Some long-buried and primal part of him remembers how it feels, imagines the rush in his veins as he'd peel the gown off her body, the tense coil of muscles winding tightly in anticipation, the sensation of falling and flying. It had barely occurred to him, when they first traveled together, that any of this was something they could do. It's the sort of thing other people partake in, people without centuries of baggage or a culture seeking to abandon all traces of the physical, people with appetites and preferences that exist outside a nebulous grey spectrum. Not that there's anything wrong with sex. It just isn't something he often participates in, or often cares to. But then again, Rose has always had a peculiar way of challenging so much of what he knows about himself.

And strangely, there is still no warning sounding at the back of his skull. His time sense is unusually quiet. Which is both wonderful and terrible—wonderful, because it means they're free to do as they wish, for once; terrible because it means the only thing holding them back is him.

(This, he thinks, is one of the many reasons that he can't stand to travel alone. He has too much time for introspection now, too much opportunity for self-awareness. And over the course of a millennia, he's accumulated a lot of mental detritus he doesn't care to sift through, can't bare to look at, refuses to examine more than he must.)

"Rose," he starts to say, but the rest of his sentence is chopped off by a small explosion at the other end of the room.

A Bhyllic warbeast bursts through the far wall, heralded by a flurry of rocks and bits of plaster and glass sailing in all directions. Gala guests throw up their arms to shield their faces, stumble backwards amidst the vibrations that wrack the floor. The warbeast opens its many-toothed maw and hurls out a roar that rattles the Doctor's ribs and the soles of his shoes. Some guests stand and watch, quivering and open-mouthed and frozen with fear; others scatter and scream, scurrying to get away, pushing at each other as the beast splinters through the crumbling wall with its two-meter horns. The Doctor clings to Rose's waist, holding her steady against the churning crowd while he cranes his neck to get a better look.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please remain calm!" one of the palace guards shouts, waving his hands wildly. "The situation is under control, the Menagerie Patrol will be here any moment—!"

The warbeast roars again, and this time the bellow reverberates outward in a lightning-fast ripple, shattering all of the windows and drink-glasses and eyeglasses in the room. The Doctor throws up an arm to shield his face. Digging its hooves deeper into the floor, the beast creeps further inside, nostrils flaring and mouth contorted in a grimace.

"The Menagerie Break," the Doctor realizes. He watches the Patrol filter into the room, pushing past the stampede of panicked guests with their Stunners at the ready. The beast snaps at them, its teeth clicking together with a sound like a steel bear trap. " _Of course_ they'd be sent to the palace first," the Doctor hisses, carding a hand through his hair and cursing himself for his negligence, "and _of course_ no one would have recorded it, that ridiculous Bhyllic pride—oh, I'm so stupid that I never saw it before!"

With another earth-shattering roar, the warbeast drags itself further inside. Without even thinking about it, the Doctor shifts, planning to position himself between the snarling monster and Rose, but he's stopped by the pressure of her fingers curling around his, the light pull of her hand. He looks back and she's smiling.

Why is she smiling?

"Run!" she shouts, and then she's tugging him away.

Rose pulls him past the other guests, through the skeleton of what was once a window, its empty frame too narrow for quadrupedal reptiles or horned warbeasts to fit through but just the right size for a human and a skinny Time Lord. The two of them clamber out into a street damp with rain, white stone walls and cobblestone streets made glistening in the moonlight by millions of fat cherry-sized drops.

"Rose Tyler, shame on you!" the Doctor shouts after her, his voice echoing over the pitter of rain and the patter of their feet in the alley, but he's laughing, too, chuckling and blinking raindrops out of his eyes. "Running away from those fine people in their time of need!"

"The Patrol's taking care of it," Rose shoots back, "and if something really big had happened here, you'd know about it, wouldn't you? Besides," she continues, throwing wet hair and a smile over her shoulder, "who says you've got to be responsible for everything?"

His hearts each skip a beat. "Yeah," the Doctor says. They're running, the two of them, just as they should be, and a thrill tingles up his spine, adrenaline and elation braiding together with a desire to do something just a little bit careless. The temptation to give her exactly what she wants (what he wants too, if he's being honest) grows bolder with every step down the street and each coy grin Rose sends his way.

(Doesn't he deserve just a little bit of something wonderful before he dies?)

And while Rose was lovely at the gala, this is how she really is, the way she always should be, lost shoes and muddy-hemmed gowns and damp hair clinging to her face and neck in tendrils, laughing and pink-cheeked as she leads him away from despair, well-kissed lips begging for more—

He can't stand it. The Doctor tugs on her hand, urging her back in an echo of her earlier actions at the palace. Thrown off-balance, Rose whirls around, crashing into him. The solid _thump_ of her body knocking into his is a welcome reminder that, for a short while at least, they're both still here. That all of this is real.

"Almost knocked me down," Rose chuckles, pulling herself upright with her arms on his.

"I caught you," he points out.

"Aren't you a proper gentleman?" she teases.

After hesitating for just half a second, teetering precariously on a razor's edge of nervousness and want, the Doctor reaches up toward her face, traces his thumb along Rose's cheek. Her skin is smooth, far softer than his, and even though the rain is contriving to keep her cool, he can feel her warming up under his touch, see her flush beneath his gaze.

"Maybe not right now," the Doctor admits, and he draws her upward for another kiss.

For a moment, he is content to lose himself in the moment, adrift in the feel of her hands on his chest, the soft and undemanding pressure of her lips, the rough-smooth texture of her tongue intermingling with crisp, cool rain, the heat of her mouth beneath his. Human beings are so delightfully _warm_. Kissing her is like waking from a good long sleep and basking in the sun after.

He can feel his self-control slipping away like grains of sand trickling through an hourglass. If he wanted, he could stop it, but that's the funny thing—for once, he doesn't want to. He just wants to let go and _fall_.

But when Rose's hands find their way to his lapels, fingers wrapping round and arms dragging him down even closer, another undercurrent of thought sneaks in: this is how she'll kiss the other him, later. Their arms will wrap tightly around each other and their mouths will clash together, both of them oblivious to the howl of the wind and the crash of the waves and the seething bitterness welling up inside him as he watches, stunned and empty-handed, just a few meters away.

(He shouldn't have been so surprised, when it happened for him—this was what he planned, right? How else was this supposed to end?—but he hadn't accounted for just how torturously awful it would feel, watching a day-old copy get the one thing he wanted, the only thing he ever would have asked for.)

And his hands will ball up into fists as something in his throat seizes up uncomfortably and he'll walk away without a word, because what can he say? His duplicate has already said everything for him. There's nothing left.

(That also means there's nothing left to lose.)

His sense of slow contentment evaporates and a demand for urgency fills the vacuum. He doesn't kiss like the other Doctor. He won't fold his arms around her until he's touching her ribs on either side; he'll never pull her close in silent, desperate gratefulness. He'll take everything she wants to give, everything he _deserves_.

He grabs her hand and tugs her away.

* * *

Afterward, sequestered in the library on the TARDIS—neither of them was patient enough to make it all the way to a bedroom, and although she doesn't know it, hers is blocked off anyway—Rose and the Doctor lie entangled on the floor while the Doctor waits for self-consciousness to strike, or shame, or self-loathing, or guilt or any of the usual things that come creeping in over the edges when he slows down for any period of time. But, while those things may seep in later, they remain mercifully far away right now.

"Wow," Rose mumbles, her voice muffled into his chest. She pushes a damp strand of hair out of her face. The Doctor can't tell if it's wet from rain or sweat; suspects it's a mixture of both. He opens his mouth to let a little brag escape—a breathless "Wow" seems like a pretty good sign, after all—but Rose continues with, "All this time, I thought it was just me. Like you'd never—like you were too far away."

His throat constricts, a tiny thread of pain strangling his words. "I'm here now."

"Yeah, I think you must be. My imagination's not that good," Rose teases, an echo of years past (well, months for her, years for him), and he can't help it. The discomfort is already gone and he's smiling at her like an idiot.

Gods, he's doomed.

"Of course, in my imagination, you didn't still have half your clothes on," Rose continues, drumming her fingers nervously on the bottom of his ribcage.

"Your imagination? Have you been thinking about this?" the Doctor laughs. "Did you plan to seduce me, Rose Tyler?"

He can feel the warmth of her through his shirt, and the moment her lips turn up in a grin. "Might have done. Might be doing it again."

He might be perfectly all right with that.

* * *

It's odd. The Doctor has not imagined that his relationship (he shudders at the word, at the implications of utter _domesticity_ ) with Rose would ever transcend to anything other than what it is—or at least he will never admit to imagining such things, not even to himself—but if he did, and he ever gave any time to those thoughts, he would fear that things would change between them. That their easy-going friendship and too-tight hugs and too-long looks would devolve into something awkward and heartbreaking and fragile. But really, the only thing that changes is that too-long looks sometimes turn into surprise snogs and too-tight hugs occasionally turn into too-tight hugs with no clothes on.

He drops by for more visits when his younger self is not around; she smiles when she sees him approach. He watches while she follows after aliens and digs for clues and delights in the wonders of the universe; she threads her fingers through his and pulls him along. She maps the planes of his body with her hands; he charts her terrain with his teeth and tongue.

It's different. Good different.

Except for the one way it isn't.

Because one evening, as they lie side-to-side atop his fanned-out coat, gazing up at the constellations hanging in the sky over Verogen IV, Rose presses a soft kiss to his jaw and tells him she loves him.

A dull panic suffocates his voice and the rest of his words die in his mouth.

"I'm sorry," Rose says quickly, settling back a few inches away. "I shouldn't have said anything. I just—I don't know, it's true, and I just thought you should know."

"You shouldn't do that," he tells her; his words have returned to life with a bite in them.

"Shouldn't do what?" she laughs weakly. "Be honest? Be a stupid ape with stupid ape feelings? I never said you had to say it back to me."

The Doctor rubs a weary hand over his face. "No. You shouldn't apologize for how you feel."

Rose quiets. He can practically hear her blushing. "Ah," she says, chewing on a thumbnail. "Well, now I feel a bit embarrassed. How about that?"

"That's just fluctuations in your pregenual anterior cingulate cortex. It'll pass."

"Maybe if I'm lucky, the ground will swallow me up first."

"You're not alone, you know."

She shifts to get a better look at him, neck craning and eyes searching. "What do you mean?"

The Doctor curses himself for opening his mouth even as he continues to speak. "You're not alone in how you feel. It's not—the feeling is not unrequited. It isn't one-sided."

"Right," Rose says as she parses out his double-speak. A negative times a negative equals a positive. Maths aren't her strong suit, but she's no fool. "Glad that's settled, then."

He nods, and he tries to smile, and he wants to be glad. These are all words that should flood him with happiness. Sentiments that should make him babble like an overexcited fountain, giddiness spilling over the edges, words pouring out in an attempt at external distraction while internally his brain overdoses on dopamine. Instead, the conversation sinks to the bottom of his stomach like a stone.

When she says those words again, her voice cut in half by tears and the sharp ocean breeze, he won't say them back to her.

(He can't think of a more magnificently selfish way to fuck someone up than having them fall in love with the same coward four times over.)

* * *

Later that night—or perhaps it's the next day, or two days later, or ten; it doesn't matter, because time barely means anything on the TARDIS, holds absolutely no significance whatsoever in the Vortex—the Doctor stands hunched over the console, looking without seeing, hearing without listening. The TARDIS is drifting toward his next destination and he has no idea what it is and he doesn't care.

He's thinking.

(It would be more accurate to say that he's plotting.)

He thinks about Romeo and Juliet, and all of the assorted clichés and tropes associated with that and other such similar stories, other doomed lovers and tragic romances. He thinks about how much he dislikes all of them. In particular, the phrase "star-crossed lovers" has always irritated him, grating on his nerves like sandpaper rubbing against the grain. Because the truth is, those characters earn their sad endings. They make poor decisions, rush headlong into ridiculous plots, miscommunicate intentions and refuse to tie up loose ends. Writers garner sympathy for young lovers who meet such melodramatic fates, but the fact is, they could have made better choices.

Their stories didn't have to end that way.

 _("Have you considered how you'll bear the separation, and how he'll bear to be quite deserted in the world?"_ )

Pain blossoms at the back of his skull as his time sense creeps back in, soft black tendrils curling gently around his amygdala and chiming a quiet warning. It's a threat he ignores. Because he's tired of following these stupid rules, tired of living in the lines drawn for him by someone else. The people who wrote those rules aren't around any longer, anyway. Who else can force him to obey? Who is left to temper his will and keep him away from what he deserves?

(If he'll murder a sun just to say goodbye, how far will he go to keep her?)

The Doctor reaches down and enters a new command into the console, pulls the TARDIS off-course. He charts a new destination: the Virgo Supercluster, Milky Way Galaxy, Orion Arm, Earth. London 2006.

The warning in his head sounds suspiciously like a Cloister Bell.


	4. Part Four

Strange, the Doctor doesn't remember Earth being quite so _red_ before.

It's a good thing he didn't step outside the TARDIS without looking, he thinks, because otherwise he's fairly certain he would be the humanoid equivalent of beef jerky in six seconds flat. He likes his bodily fluids fluid, thanks. But then again, that's decompression for you; just how things work on a planet with barely any atmosphere. He isn't certain why the TARDIS landed right here, right now, when it absolutely is not the place or the time the Doctor chose, but she doesn't seem interested in moving. (Probably he flicked his wrist just so when he set the quantum throttle; tricky thing, that.)

The rotor whines when he tries to re-plot and a thin column of smoke rises from the dash. Overheated. The Doctor curses his rubbish piloting and worse timing, always an ironic predicament for someone whose affinity with time is supposed to be so engrained that it's a shorthand for his species nomenclature. Couldn't the TARDIS have waited just a little bit longer to burn out?

"Don't think I don't know what you're doing," he snaps at the TARDIS. "It won't work. And what's more, I don't appreciate it. I'm flying you straight back to Earth the second you cool down. Understand?"

The TARDIS is silent in response.

Eyes closed and teeth gritted, the Doctor leans back, hands gripping the railing behind him. His fingers are going to smell unpleasantly of metal (steel and copper and blood-smell) but it isn't like his hands have got anything better to do. Time machine or not, he doesn't have the time for this nonsense. He needs to get back to Earth _now_.

He drums his fingers on the railing, the soft sound echoing around him. Maybe he should just stay put, he thinks. Wait in the console room until she's cooled off enough to travel again. Drumming louder, he wonders just how long it would take him to go mad, sitting in here, twiddling his thumbs.

(Listening to the rapidly-increasing rhythm of his fingers, thinking about everything that could go wrong with his plan.)

It takes approximately four-point-eight minutes for him to pull on his trusty old spacesuit and step outside onto the desolate surface of Mars.

* * *

Afterward, the Doctor doesn't waste time thinking about it. It's useless crying over spilled milk or broken promises or dead humans. He has to look forward now; no sense looking back unless he wants to turn into a pillar of salt.

Hands shake and hearts stutter and the sound of a gunshot plays in his head, over and over, louder even than the song of the Vortex, but his resolve is steady and steel-tempered.

 _(Is there anything you can't do?)_

He just needs to make a few adjustments to ensure the TARDIS won't interfere again.

He's not beaten yet.

* * *

The Doctor is not a predator, but there's something distinctly lionlike about him as he stalks his target.

Even as he walks with his hands in his coat-pockets, the very picture of casual unconcern to most passersby, fellow hunters would recognize the tight lines of his shoulders, the set of his jaw, the flicker of his eyes. The tension coiled in a cat's upper back before it springs. Impatience tugs at his consciousness but he ignores it, along with his time sense clamoring in the background and intermingling with all the noises of a bustling London crowd loudly enough to give him a migraine. Because, like all good hunters, he knows that patience eventually pays off. That timing is everything.

Rose is not prey, but she still knows when she is being watched. Her gaze slowly travels from the Doctor standing next to her to the Doctor closing in from a few meters away, his approach alternately visible and camouflaged by a herd of downtown shoppers. Rose's brow furrows even as she smiles, but the younger Doctor doesn't notice—he's too busy poring over papers at the newsstand, checking to see if anything interesting has taken place in the time since their last layover. (No signs of additional rogue Hoix, and somehow he won't notice anything about ghosts, either.) He doesn't try to stop Rose when she steps back, barely offers her a glance when she drops her knapsack and allows the older Doctor to pull her away by the hand.

He isn't a predator, but he isn't exactly a good shepherd, either.

The Doctor flashes Rose a brief smile in response to her unasked questions, tugging her away from his younger self before anyone has a chance to think any better. It's a lazy and close-lipped smile. He doesn't want anyone else to see him; he doesn't want Rose to see his teeth.

(Doesn't want her eyes to widen with realization, her muscles to tremble until she bolts away.)

Once he has tugged her around the corner, safely out of view, he pounces.

Rose doesn't even have time to finish saying "Hello" before he has pulled her to him, drawing her in by the upper arms and capturing her lips in a bruising kiss. Mouths meet and lips slide together and he drinks it all in like a man dying of thirst. Rose melts into it without hesitation. Her arms wrap around his neck while his hands travel down to her waist, anchoring her flush against him. The only sounds between them are the soft exchange of their breaths and the whispers of their clothing and the happy little hum hiding under Rose's tongue. A rush floods through the Doctor's ears when he hears it, a welcome reprieve from the buzzing of his time sense.

She kisses him like she hasn't seen him in weeks. The Doctor kisses her like these are his final words.

"Come on," he says when they break, grabbing her hand and interlacing his fingers with hers. "We haven't got much time."

"Where are we going?"

"Anywhere," he tells her. "Everywhere. Away."

Rose grins and follows after him, leaving laughter and nervous glances in her wake. Probably she's worried about the younger Doctor—and she should be, even now the Doctor can feel his memories changing, distorting like stretched taffy as his younger self looks around and wonders where his companion wandered off to this time, and he can't tell if the noise in his head is a memory or a thing of the now—but she trusts him, she trusts _this_ him, and the Doctor tries not to think about that too much. He can feel the timelines straining around him, stretching to the brink of splitting, but he doesn't let that stop him from guiding her away, leading her down several empty alleys until they find the TARDIS.

"Excellent," he breathes, pushing the doors open. Once they've stepped inside, he whirls around to face her, forcing a broad grin on his face. "Now, how do you fancy a little field trip? Bit of a lateral move, just over to take care of some things at Canary—"

"Oh my god," Rose cuts in. She isn't listening to him, isn't even looking at him. Her eyes travel all over the console room, her mouth hanging open in worry. "What's wrong with the TARDIS?"

The Doctor glances about uneasily. He's not sure what she's complaining about. Nothing is wrong. Well, certainly, the glass column sits stiller than usual, the hum is perhaps a little sickly, and the reddish-pink hue could be a little off-putting if you hadn't seen it before. The tools scattered about like debris after an explosion present a minor injury hazard as well, lying on the grating and sticking shrapnel-like out of the console as they are. And one could easily mistake the erratic vibrations pulsing under their feet, the on-again off-again thrum of _danger-danger-danger_ , for the sound that an automobile engine chokes out before it sputters its last. But nothing is _wrong_ with the TARDIS; everything looks exactly as it should, considering.

"Not sure I follow," the Doctor replies, tugging on one ear. "Nothing—"

His words are chopped in half by Rose pushing past him up the ramp. "What happened to you?" she asks, now talking to the TARDIS, addressing it like she might address a sick kitten. She reaches out to pat the dash reassuringly. "Did something nasty get to—"

 _SNAP_.

The instant Rose's fingers touch the desk, a bright white spark arcs out and bites into her hand. She jumps back, eyes wide.

"Whoa," she says. "What was that?"

"Static discharge," the Doctor lies cheerfully.

"Static?" Rose asks in disbelief.

"Yep!" the Doctor assures her, popping the 'p'. Before he has a chance to gauge whether Rose believes him or not, he pushes past her, bounding up the ramp. His plimsolls bang over the grating as he darts around the control desk, peeling off his coat and throwing it over the ramparts before he starts flipping switches and pulling levers. "You wouldn't believe the buildup generated by bouncing around the galaxy," he babbles. "It's a major hazard of space travel. Extraterrestrial travel in particular, I should say. Not the travel between spaces. Intradimensional trips are their own bag. But space travel is a terrible hazard for the electronics. On the plus side, I could set up my own xerography business, make a mint."

Rose laughs uneasily. "Right. Erm, Doctor—"

"How do you fancy it? We could give it a go," he interrupts, punching keys and ignoring the worry that has descended over Rose's face. "No cyanotype? No worries! Tyler and Smith's Xero and Co. can help in a pinch. See, it's funny because you'd do it in zero gravity. Get it? Xero? Zero?"

He shoots Rose a manic grin as he twists a bunch of cables together in an open panel. Probably should have done that earlier, but he was in a bit of a hurry. "So? What do you think?" he asks.

Rose issues a nervous smile in return. "I sort of think you've gone a bit mad," she laughs.

"Only a bit," he says with a wink, and turns his attention to the navigation plotter. The thing remains stubbornly immobile, no matter how he pushes it. He lets out a huff and cringes at the crescendo of commotion building in his cerebrum. _Why won't the blasted thing work?_

Rose gingerly reaches out the touch a coral strut. She startles when another arc of electricity leaps out at her. "Is she sick?" Rose asks.

"No," the Doctor replies, shaking his head both in response and to clear the ruckus away. "Just stubborn."

Glancing around again, Rose frowns. "You don't think anything's wrong with her?"

The Doctor squeezes his eyes shut. His time sense rings in his ears, the sound filling his head, wheedling and screaming and _bang-bang-bang-banging_ over and over and over and he suddenly has a keen insight into the madness caused by the sound of drums.

"Doctor?" Rose asks, stepping toward him, and the bedlam in his head intensifies. The ringing explodes into a full-blown orchestra of cacophony, bells jangling and horns screeching and cymbals clashing and voices shouting and maybe that last one is just him because he's pretty sure he can feel his cerebrospinal fluid boiling.

( _It can't be stopped_ )

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," the Doctor manages to force out. "Nothing is wrong. Everything is fine. It's all as it should be."

"But the TARDIS—"

"The TARDIS is just a _machine_ , Rose," the Doctor lobs back, almost spits. He grips the edge of the control desk and feels a muscle twinge in his cheek. "Who are you going to trust, a machine or me?"

Rose's eyes widen in alarm.

The Doctor realizes that he's panting for breath (just a little bit, only a little tiny bit, maybe she didn't even notice, maybe she's looking him up and down for a completely different reason). He shouldn't have to pant. It's long past time to regain some control. Engage the respiratory bypass. Reset everything to zero. Turn it all off and on again and maybe that won't be fear creeping across Rose's face anymore.

"What's going on?" Rose demands.

"It's nothing. It doesn't matter," the Doctor replies, straightening his back and drawing up to his full height. "The only thing that matters is what we choose to do right now."

"Like…?"

One last time, the Doctor considers his words and the possible damage of them. Potential versus kinetic energy, and just how badly can he ruin the universe, anyway?

"You know something's about to happen," he says slowly. Says, doesn't ask.

Rose nods. But her words are slow as well. She seems reluctant to speak them aloud. "You said a storm was coming."

"Yes, well. I'm sure you picked up that I was speaking metaphorically. But what if I told you, in very literal terms, that we had the power to stop the storm? Prevent it from ever creeping over the horizon, stop it in its tracks before it can obliterate everything in its path? You and me? Right now?"

She blinks. And there it is, the deer-in-headlight look he's been waiting for. Nonplussed, Rose shrugs. "I would say—I mean, you're from my future, right? So whatever this is, it's already happened for you. So I guess I would say, wouldn't that muck things up? Crossing your own timeline like that?"

"Yes, very much" is what he should say.

( _We're fighting time itself_ )

"No, not at all," he tells her instead.

( _and I'm gonna win_ )

He closes the gap between them, approaching her with slow steps. Slow, so she won't run away. "Do this with me," he urges. (Pleads.)

"Why? What happens?"

"That doesn't matter. It'll never matter, not if you stop this thing with me right now."

Swallowing loudly, Rose stammers. "I—I don't know—the timelines—"

"Time can be rewritten."

"But you told me, you told me dozens of times, you said—"

"Do you want to leave?"

Rose openly balks at that, but can't seem to find the words to respond. The Doctor's feet have stopped mere inches from hers, just far enough that the two of them can maintain eye contact, just close enough that she can't easily escape. He watches while she works through her confusion, her eyes searching his for any hint of relief. He won't offer it, not unless she says what he wants to hear. The thought that she might say "Yes," that she might turn on her heel and go, makes his throat constrict and his eyes burn.

(Distantly, he wonders what his fellow Time Lords would think of him right now, breaking himself and splitting time for one small human. He tells himself he doesn't care.)

"Rose," he says, forcing a veneer of patience over his voice, "do you want to leave the TARDIS?"

"No," she says quietly.

"Do you want to leave this life behind?"

"I don't. Are you saying that that happens?"

"Do you want to leave me?"

A hysterical laugh bursts out of her in response. "God, do you really have to ask? You already know what the answer's gonna be."

"Say it. Say it, please."

Rose's lips press together. She's fighting tears; he can see them glimmering in her lashes, but she refuses to let them fall. "Of course I don't want to leave you," she admits, her voice breaking. "I never want to leave you."

His answering smile is a grim one but he pulls her in for a kiss before she can see it, grasping her by the chin and pressing his lips to hers. He knows he's distracting her, knows he's cheating, but he doesn't stop, won't stop until she's marked as his by his hands and his teeth and the universe won't take this one last thing from him, it won't, it won't, it won't.

(He's earned this, he tells himself. _He deserves it._ )

"Wow," Rose breathes, pulling back for air. "I'm never gonna get used to that."

"You could," he tells her. ( _You will_ , he means.) He leans his forehead against hers. Eyes drift closed and his words come out in a murmur. "Stay with me."

A pause. Her fingers clench in the front of his jacket, her hands betraying the fact that she's shaking just a little bit.

She swallows again. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay. I'll stay. I'll stay and help. I'll stay with you."

Warmth floods his chest and fizzes up into his head, leaving him feeling drunk. He rewards her with another kiss, a hungry thing that forces her mouth open for exploration. If the sudden intensity surprises her, if she senses the full depth of his desperation, she doesn't show it. Or maybe she matches it, dragging her fingers through his hair and nails against his scalp and he can't imagine any better way to shut up his bleating time sense than to hear her gasp into his mouth.

At least, that seems like an excellent plan until he backs her up against a coral strut.

Rose lets out a sharp cry as another spark bites into her, the TARDIS shocking her upon contact. The aftershocks send little spasms rocketing through her frame. The Doctor yanks her away before the TARDIS has a chance to shock her again.

"Ah yes," he says, grimacing. "That." He smacks the column for good measure. It doesn't shock him, because of course it doesn't, because he's not the paradox in the room.

"Why's the TARDIS doing that?" Rose asks, gingerly rubbing the back of her head and neck.

The Doctor pulls back, glares at the red-pulsing console. "It's nothing to worry about. It's just being difficult. But we can't have that, can we?"

"Is she going to keep doing that, if I'm in here?"

"No," the Doctor murmurs, stepping away. He's thinking. The clamor in his head has faded to a dull background ache and ideas have flooded through in its stead. "It won't happen again," he mutters, reaching out to touch the control desk.

He knows there are ways to make the TARDIS obey his will. Is he not lord of this vessel? Lord of time itself?

( _The Laws of Time are mine, and they will obey me_ )

"I need to take care of a few things, Rose," he says, turning around to find her watching him with no small measure of concern. "And it would probably be best if you were someplace else until I'm done."

Rose opens her mouth like she's going to argue, but she seems to think better of it, biting her lip instead. "How long do you need?"

"Thirty minutes. Maybe an hour. An hour. Can you give me that?"

"And then we'll fix this thing, and everything will be all right?"

"Everything will be wonderful," he tells her with a smile.

When she looks uncertainly around the TARDIS, as if searching for support, the Doctor steps closer, takes her hands in his. "You told me 'Forever', once," he says softly. "That's what you want, isn't it?"

Rose hesitates. Then she nods.

The Doctor's smile broadens. "Good."

Drawing her in, he presses a hard kiss to her mouth. She's really shaking now, nervous tremors shivering through her. The Doctor promises to make all of this up to her when everything is settled. Later, she'll understand.

"An hour," he repeats when they part. "An hour, and then we'll make everything better. We'll stop the storm. Together."

"Together," Rose agrees, and she pushes up on the balls of her feet to plant one more quick kiss on the Doctor's lips.

Loathe to lose contact with her, the Doctor holds her hand for as long as he can while she slips away, watches as she runs down the ramp. He feels his face split wide open in a grin when she reaches the door and turns back for one last look. Rose relaxes a little at that, and he thinks his expression must be convincing, because even from here, he can see her shoulders loosening. She flashes him a smile of her own.

Then she pushes the doors open and in a flash of powder-blue, she's gone.

The moment the doors close behind her, the Doctor pushes off, shedding his jacket and tie and dropping them to the grating without a second glance. Circling the console, he unbuttons his cuffs and rolls his sleeves to the elbow. His thoughts race and his eyes travel over the desk, surveying buttons and switches and levers and keys and all the things ripped out or plugged in where they don't belong.

The TARDIS hums unhappily around him, her song quiet and sick-sounding.

"Now," the Doctor breathes. "I've got no more patience for tricks or treason. Are you going to play nice, or do I need to make you play nice?"

His response is a resounding three knocks on the doors.

The Doctor halts, his tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth. "It hasn't been an hour yet," he calls out, because it was only three raps, not four, so he refuses to worry.

( _Three knocks is all you're getting_ )

Besides, who else could it be but Rose? Impatient little human.

Chuckling to himself, he bounds around the desk and down the ramp. "Couldn't stand it, could you?" he asks cheekily as he strides along. Pure, unfettered satisfaction surges through him, smug amusement that Rose can't stand to be apart for that long. He closes his hand around the doorknob and gives it a good pull. "Just couldn't stay away—"

He pulls the door open, and there she is, sure enough, she's Rose, but—

But he sees her, and the words lodge in his throat.

The Doctor doesn't mean to stop talking. He just does. The end of his sentence detaches and goodness knows where it went as amusement gives way to a sensation like ice water pumping into his stomach. The rest of his body seems to understand what he's saying before his brain fully understands the message relayed by his optic nerves.

Rose is thinner than she was just a few moments ago. She is thinner, her hair is longer, her mouth is set and her eyes are sad. And she is wearing a blue leather jacket.

The Doctor wonders whether he should attempt speech again or close the doors before she can get any closer, just do something, something, anything, but he's too flummoxed to do anything but stare while his hearts clench in his chest.

( _You don't look like a coward, but all you've wanted to do is leave_ )

"You're here," Rose says, the words like a prayer. For a moment, the mask slips, and he can see relief in the way her eyelashes flutter, in the way her whole body seems to relax by just an inch as she looks him over. Then she visibly steels herself.

"We need to talk."

* * *

 _Water and fire and noise and_

(sorry, Doctor, it looks like history's got other ideas)

 _Noise forms thought pushes words shouting out of his mouth_

(I'm not beaten yet)

( _not beaten_ )

Not beaten

No wait, that's wrong, that all happened already and he doesn't remember pressing rewind. Fast-forward instead. No use crying about it.

Look forward.

Don't turn into a pillar of salt.

* * *

"Doctor?" Rose asks, searching his face for any hint of recognition.

He shakes his head to clear the fog. "Rose," he says, forcing a broad smile for her sake. "Long time no see."

"Yeah," she replies with a half-grin. "Very long time."

The Doctor stalls for just the briefest moment—he doesn't know what Rose wants to talk about, but he knows that she's probably looking for an embrace and meaningful dialogue and declarations of some sort, and she's not going to get any of that. He simply hasn't got the time. The only consolation he can offer is that soon, much like a sand castle built too close to the water at high tide, this conversation won't matter anymore.

"So," he says, clapping his hands together and slapping a veneer of cheerfulness back over his voice. "I imagine you're here about that pesky business with the stars going out. The good news is: you're on the right track. You fix it. Happy endings all round."

Surprised, Rose starts to speak, but the Doctor cuts her off. "Not much of a spoiler, I don't think, especially if things proceed the way I've planned them. But the bad news is: you don't fix it here. You're just a hop, skip, and a jump too late in the timeline, I'm afraid. Might want to adjust the Cannon's readings for that pesky dimensional feedback flux."

Rose shakes her head. "Actually, that's not entirely why I'm here."

The Doctor frowns. "You mean the stars aren't going out?"

"No," Rose says slowly. "I mean I know exactly where I am, and more importantly, I know exactly when."

"Exactly? Down to the nanosecond? Impressive. Dimension-hopping suits you."

"Look, I haven't got a whole lot of time, I just really wanted to—"

"Well, I won't keep you," the Doctor interrupts. He reaches for the door handles. "Good luck!"

"Doctor," Rose says, and he stops at the sound of her voice, how it wearies as the conversation goes on. "Please. I know I'm pushing things being here right now. But it's been a hell of a few weeks. A hell of a few years, actually. I think I've earned a couple minutes of your attention."

Fingers tapping impatiently on the door handles, the Doctor casts about desperately for something, anything he can say to make her leave. But short of slamming the doors in her face, he comes up empty. Maybe the path of least resistance would be the best one to travel just this once.

"Fine," he concedes. "What did you want to talk about?"

"Are you okay?"

The Doctor stares at her. "You made an extradimensional detour just to ask me if I'm okay?"

"It's just something I've wondered," she replies, brushing her hair behind one ear. "I mean, I've had more than enough time to think about it. Sort of replaying stuff in my head, all the things we did before, everything leading up to today. And with everything that just happened…"

She falters, losing herself in a memory. It looks like a painful one. "Like I said. Hell of a few weeks."

"Well, you shouldn't have troubled yourself. Hardly worth the trip. I'm all right, really."

Rose's eyes narrow. "Really?"

"Yep!" The Doctor pushes away from the doors and saunters back toward the console, because Rose or no Rose, he's got work to do. "I'm always all right!" he shouts over his shoulder.

"So you weren't planning to do anything rash, then?" Rose calls after him. "Like, oh, I don't know—stopping everything that happened on Torchwood Tower?"

"Nope," the Doctor replies, refusing to look at her, choosing instead to reach down and pluck a plasma wrench from where he dropped it near the control desk.

"You were, though," Rose insists. "You were gonna do something at Torchwood. Something big. I know you were."

"Oh, I'm not arguing that. That is most certainly the plan. But it's hardly rash."

Rose doesn't say anything, doesn't budge from the doorway. Ah well, no matter. The Doctor slides under the console to do a little work. This paradox machine isn't going to complete itself, after all.

"So why didn't you?" Rose asks quietly.

The Doctor chips away at the corner of a panel, leveraging the plasma wrench to try and prise the thing off. "Sorry?" he grunts.

"Why didn't you stop it? Why didn't you come back for me?"

"I wouldn't worry about it," he says. Practically chirps. "Just give it a few minutes, and things will be better." He pulls out the sonic and aims it at the wiring just so (setting 587, inverting the frequency of the auxiliary temporal array, and the TARDIS creaks in protest). After, he flashes Rose another small grin. "Doesn't that sound nice? For things to be better? Don't you want that?"

Rose looks away. "It doesn't really matter what I want."

The Doctor clicks his tongue. "Oh, now that's a little unfair, isn't it?" he asks, pulling himself off the floor so he can type in a set of phrases to alter the TARDIS' base code. "Of course it matters. Just think about it: it'll be like you never left in the first place!"

"But I did leave," Rose argues, and he can tell she's confused. She shifts from her spot in the doorway and walks toward him. "I didn't want to, but I did leave, I—"

She glances around the console room then, and for the first time, her eyes linger on all of the things that are out-of-place, the tools scattered about the desk and floor willy-nilly, abandoned like surgical implements thrown to the floor; she peers at the open panels of the console that overflow with cables and cords and circuitboards, wounds bleeding a strange mixture of electronic and organic viscera.

"Wait," she says suspiciously. "You're not still planning to do this, are you?"

The Doctor glances up at her. "What do you think?" he asks, but he doesn't say it like she's stupid. He's genuinely curious to know what she thinks of all of this, one universe and several years later.

"I don't know. I mean, that's sort of the other reason I'm here, to find out exactly what happened today. But now I'm just confused. Because you don't change things. You don't come back for me."

"Maybe I didn't," the Doctor argues cheerfully. "But I will."

"You don't," Rose insists.

"I will," the Doctor repeats, trapping his tongue between his teeth in concentration as he types.

Rose takes another step forward, closer to him. "Doctor, I'm telling you, you don't."

The Doctor laughs. "And I'm telling you, I will and I am and I do." Striking a key just a little harder than he needs to, he punctuates his bout of typing with a flourish. "Why are we even having this conversation? Your impressive quantum accomplishments notwithstanding, I do know just a bit more about this sort of thing."

He holds up his thumb and forefinger to illustrate. "Just a bit."

"Why, though? Why this, why now?"

Slipping his spectacles out of his pocket and onto his nose, the Doctor pulls a swiveling screen toward him under the guise of running diagnostics. "Isn't it obvious?" he asks, almost under his breath.

Rose's eyebrow piques in question, but she's silent.

The Doctor shakes himself. "Just think about it. No more Battle at Canary Wharf. No more Void ships, no more worrying about Void stuff, no more Daleks or Cybermen or horrid white walls." He whips around to look at her, gesticulating wildly. "No more being stranded in Pete's World!"

"You mean no more Mum and Pete," Rose points out. "No more Tony."

"Well," the Doctor says, drawing the word out while he plays for time. "Not necessarily. Pete and Mickey and their lot will come over here no matter what we do. Whole separate universe, whole separate set of events. Who says we can't give Pete a little nudge when he pops over, talk him into staying here with your mum?"

Rose plants her hands on her hips. "Still, that doesn't account for everything I did at Torchwood. My Torchwood. Friends I made, people I helped, people I saved."

( _some little people_ )

"Eh," the Doctor grunts, dismissively waving her off. "You can do that here."

Her eyes go wide at that. "Right, because what I was really talking about was my own sense of self-importance, not the fact that people could _die_."

"Oh, come off it. You know what I mean," the Doctor laughs. He enters a last set of instructions on a keyboard and feels the TARDIS ripple beneath his feet. Stepping back, he leans lazily against the railing. He's got a few minutes before the TARDIS reboots. Why not spend those minutes reassuring Rose, even if it's only for his own peace of mind? "Besides, what about all of the lives lost because of Canary Wharf?"

( _I've done this sort of thing before_ )

"I'm sure those people would appreciate not-dying," he continues.

( _In small ways, saved some little people_ )

"In fact, I'm sure there are a great deal of people who would appreciate our help," he says.

( _Oh, I'm good_ )

"And as instrumental as you undoubtedly are to your Torchwood, I'm confident that they can carry on without you," the Doctor finishes.

"But you can't?"

The Doctor's smile slips a little. "Never said that."

Rose shakes her head. "No. This isn't right," she half-mutters. "I remember. I remember coming back here, and you were gone. And everything at Torchwood definitely happened. With the Cybermen and the Daleks and Mum and me getting pulled across. I had nightmares about it, nightmares for months. We never stopped it. You never did come back."

"Well, maybe I didn't fetch you then because you're conveniently here now," the Doctor reasons. "It really doesn't matter which version of you helps me with this. It just needs to be you."

"You're saying nothing's happened since then, nothing that would change your mind?"

( _And there's no stopping you?_ )

"No," he says, and his voice is dark behind the smile.

He watches Rose's face as she works through it all; he sees her confusion and disbelief drain away, leaving realization clinging behind. He sees the exact moment the truth dawns on her when her mouth falls open and she takes a step back—no, a stagger. It's like the revelation hits her with a physical blow. She looks like she might be sick.

"Oh, my god," she whispers. She tears her eyes away from his, addresses her words more to herself than to him. "It's me."

"You're what?"

Her voice is so quiet, even the Doctor with his superior hearing has to strain to hear it. "I'm the thing that stops you."

( _If I have to fight you as well, then I will_ )

The Doctor's hearts squeeze painfully. Funny, it couldn't have hurt more if Rose had actually reached inside his chest and wrenched his guts both in her hands. First the TARDIS betrays him, now her?

"Nope," he says, and he's almost proud of how normal he sounds. He takes off on a stroll around the desk, circling around to the other side. "Not gonna happen."

"That's just it, though," Rose says, working her way through her thoughts. "It doesn't happen. You don't come back for me, you don't change events, and if nothing else has changed your mind, then it's got to be me. Doesn't it?"

( _Looks like history's got other ideas_ )

"No, it doesn't," the Doctor responds. His fingers fly over the console and it's a small mercy that they can type and move so quickly because it does a marvelous job of hiding his nervous energy, disguising the sense that at any moment his skeleton is going to rattle right out of his flesh. "It doesn't have to be. You don't have to do anything."

"Right, so whatever you're planning to do, dismantle the ghost shift or kidnap that Yvonne lady or blow up the building or god knows what else, I'm just supposed to sit back and let that happen? You're telling me that's not gonna cause a paradox?"

"Oh, are you an expert on paradoxes now? Lovely."

"What about ripping a hole in the fabric of space and time, what about Reapers, or fixed points, what about—"

"Alternatively, what about pretending, just for one millisecond, that I'm a Time Lord and I know exactly what I'm doing?" the Doctor asks, his voice loud but still pleasant.

"Doctor, you can't do this," Rose pleads. "Please. It's wrong. You know it is!"

( _The Time Lord Victorious is wrong_ )

"That's for me to decide," the Doctor says, shrugging.

Rose throws up her hands in frustration. "Okay, fine. Great. Say the universe doesn't explode in our faces. What do we do after that? You and me, do we just ride off into the sunset like nothing ever happened?"

"Something like that. But really, there's no point in stopping, is there? The modifications to the TARDIS open up a whole world of possibilities. Imagine," the Doctor says, spreading his hands wide like he's framing a painting. "Imagine, everywhere you go, you can do whatever you want. No more worrying about it. No more waiting idly by for the pronouncement of a bunch of dusty old rules. The entirety of time and space are laid out before you like a canvas, and you decide the brush strokes, you paint creation to your design! You can eliminate suffering, end world hunger, say goodbye to social divides, destroy the capacity for destruction and anger and death. Topple corrupt governments and stop dictators in their paths. Save entire species from extinction. Halt the progress of natural disasters. Everybody lives!"

He quiets. "And you can make it so that your loved ones never again have reason to grieve. This time, Martha's never stranded alone in 1913, kidnapped in the future, trapped wandering the Earth. Her family isn't caught up in the chaos. Old friends are never corrupted, never go mad. Sarah Jane doesn't waste years waiting. You never have to watch your father die. Engineer things just right, tweak their genetic code just so, and people can live forever. Companions don't perish or leave or wither away. Susan and Romana survive the War. There is no War. And Donna…"

Her name lodges in his teeth, stoppers up the flow of words streaming from his mouth. Burns the place behind his eyes. He's silent.

"Who's Susan?" Rose asks.

Shaking himself, the Doctor blinks those memories away. "This isn't just about us, Rose," he tells her, and if his voice has softened a bit, gone tender, then so be it. "This is about you and me and making the world a better place. For everyone. Nobody's ever sad again. Nobody's ever lonely. No one ever leaves, no one ever dies. We make reality whatever we want it to be. Doesn't that sound wonderful?"

Rose's mouth sets into a grim line. "I think it's horrific."

The Doctor can feel his muscle twinging in his cheek. His patience is running thin, but he's going to stretch it out for along as he can, keep up the ruse for as long as possible. "You don't understand right now," he says gently, removing his spectacles and pocketing them. "But that's all right. You will."

"Okay, obviously, something's going on right now. And whatever it is, I know it's bad, and I'm sorry. I really am. But you can't just make everything bad go away," Rose argues. "You help where you can, but one grand gesture won't fix the fact that there's wrong in the universe. You can't just make the world whatever you want it to be."

The Doctor nods. "I can. And I'm going to."

"I mean, look at what happened when I tried to save my dad. Do you really think it's gonna be any different if you do the same thing here?"

( _The whole of history could change_ )

( _No one should have that much power_ )

"It will be different this time," the Doctor responds.

"You don't know that."

"Yes I do, I know exactly what I'm—"

Rose's voice grows louder, competing with the sounds of his double heartsbeat hammering in his ears as she says, "You're jumping into this just as blindly as you did on Krop Tor or eighteenth-century France—"

"Please, Rose."

"And what about me? Am I gonna remember everything, am I gonna forget?"

"You won't."

"You're not infallible, you're not a god!"

"Rose—"

"Doctor," Rose cuts him off. "Please don't do this to me. I don't want you to!"

"You'll never know the difference!" the Doctor snaps.

Rose draws in a sharp intake of breath; he'd almost call it a gasp, if it weren't for the implications.

Hand through his hair, the Doctor silently curses himself. "You'll never know," he says again, his words hushed now but no less potent. "This entire conversation is pointless. Events are already set in motion. It's all just clockwork. Just a matter of time. And it'll happen with or without your consent."

( _The laws of time are mine and they will obey me_ )

"What, that's it?" Rose asks on a harsh laugh. "I don't get any say?"

( _There's no one to stop you_ )

"No," the Doctor replies, his voice sharp.

( _Not anymore_ )

Rose rolls her eyes, blinking back angry tears. "Right," she says. "Good point. What could I say? Can't argue with someone of your far-superior morals and intellect, can I?"

"It's not your fault," he says coldly. "You're only human."

When hurt flashes across her face, the Doctor softens. "If it's any consolation, you should remember everything," he tells her. "We're external to the events, safe here, in the center of activity."

"The eye of the storm," Rose mocks.

"Exactly. Everything you did, everything you were over there—it'll still live on, in your memory. But anything you don't want to remember, the Battle, this conversation, anything...well, we have ways of dealing with that, too."

Rose fixes him with a hard stare. "I never knew, did I?" she whispers. "Who you really are."

( _I don't care who you are_ )

 _BANG_.

Both of them jump at the sound of the Cloister Bell, at the glass column buzzing to life in the center of the room between them. The Bell's ring reverberates through the room long after the sound fades. It shakes the air with an impact the Doctor can feel in his teeth. A few moments later, and it tolls again, the sound ringing outward like a vicious ripple. Like a shot fired at dawn.

The countdown is complete. The TARDIS is ready.

Grimacing, the Doctor reaches out, charting a course for Canary Wharf.

"Doctor," Rose pleads. She circles around the desk, walking closer to him. "Please don't do this."

( _This is wrong, Doctor_ )

"Please," she tries again.

( _The Time Lord Victorious is wrong_ )

He can't look at her. His fingers idle over the keys.

( _I'm the winner_ )

The Doctor flips a switch and watches Rose edge closer out of the corner of his eye.

( _The whole of history could change_ )

He pauses.

( _The laws of time are mine, and they will obey me_ )

"I'm sorry, Adelaide," he murmurs.

Rose lunges toward him.

He hits the ignition.

Time rotor gasping and glass column grinding, the TARDIS gives a great lurch that jolts the Doctor and throws Rose off her feet. The entire ship shudders and the walls groan, straining to hold out against a pressure a thousand times heavier than the depths of even the darkest ocean. Tremors rip violently through the room until the control desk sparks and the roundels on the walls flash and flicker. On-off, on-off, lights spasming like in an electrical storm.

Time winds ruffle through the room, tearing at the Doctor's hair and clothes and moaning quietly beneath the shrill screech of alarms bleating overhead. Thrumming deep in the floor and the Doctor's chest, the TARDIS roars back to life in full. The entire room floods with blood-red light and the Doctor can feel the TARDIS' distress as if it were his own, as if he's straining to hold the universe together using only the atoms of his being.

He grits his teeth and pushes past the pain and grips the rough edges of the console until he can feel the coral friction-burning his palms and tearing ragged edges into his fingernails.

( _Not beaten, not beaten, not_ )

Pops of light explode behind his eyelids and he nearly doubles over in agony. The Doctor bites his tongue to cage in the cry bursting to escape his lips.

"Doctor!" Rose shouts over the noise. The time winds pick up in intensity and they pull at Rose, buffeting her hair and her clothes wildly about. She has to cling to the railing just to stay upright amidst the winds and the shockwaves bucking through the TARDIS with every tick of the second-hand. "Doctor, please!"

( _saved some little people, but never anyone as important as you_ )

Rose inches closer, pulling herself along the railing. "You told me once, you said you could feel the turn of the Earth," she yells, and the Doctor doesn't have to look to know that her face is streaked with tears from the wind. "You said you could feel us falling through space. You said you could feel that all the time. What do you feel now?"

The Doctor clenches his eyes shut in an effort to block her out, but her words ricochet around his grey matter. He feels the TARDIS shaking all around him, paroxysms that rock him to the core. He feels the time winds burning his cheeks and nose and knuckles. He tastes copper and salt, blood sour in his mouth from his hard-bitten tongue. He smells the ion charge in the air, a whiff of beryllium, a stench of burned oxygen, acrid and bitter. He hears—

His eyes fly open and he stares without seeing. It isn't what he hears that matters—the howl of the winds or the squeal of the alarms or the skip in the TARDIS' hum or the catch in Rose's breath. It's what he _doesn't_ hear. Because his time sense stopped ringing the moment he sent Rose away, he realizes. And it never started back up again.

In its place, there's...nothing. Not even darkness. It's a vacuum.

( _Don't you get it?_ )

"You can't feel it anymore, can you?" Rose shouts. "The integrity of time here has been compromised-you're damaging the timelines too much!"

( _Is there nothing you can't do?_ )

"Sometimes you have to destroy in order to rebuild," the Doctor manages to choke out.

He almost jumps at the feeling of Rose's hand closing over his. "We're clinging to the skin of the world, you and me," she tells him, eyelashes fluttering and eyes full of fear. She squeezes his hand. "And if we let go…"

( _I've gone too far_ )

Silence in his head gives way to the sound of a gunshot.

( _I don't care who you are_ )

( _The Time Lord Victorious is wrong_ )

Rose's fingers tighten around his and he can feel her pulse thundering madly in her fingertips, can practically smell her desperation. It smells like gunpowder in the snow.

With a trembling hand, the Doctor slams the kill switch.


	5. Part Five

Gradually, the ruckus around them dies down; blood-red light fades and winds slow to nothing. The sounds of the Doctor's ragged breathing are the only thing that punctuate the silence, loud and rasping and rough without any other noise to mask it. His hearts still hammer madly, but his skull feels heavy, too heavy to support any longer, and he slumps. Hangs his head and leans against the console for support and waits for the pain to subside.

(So this is what it feels like, to almost end the world. Exhausted and guilty and sick and trapped and unsatisfied in every possible way.)

In his periphery, he's vaguely aware that Rose is moving, combing her fingers through her hair. She holds her hands against her head for a moment while she collects herself.

"Thank you," she whispers on a relieved exhale.

The Doctor tenses with anger. "Satisfied, are you?" he mutters under his breath.

Rose's arms drop. "Sorry?"

Snapping to, the Doctor grabs her by the shoulders, clamping down so hard that she yelps in pain.

"I said, are you satisfied?" he asks between gritted teeth. Before Rose has a chance to defend herself, wide-eyed in shock, he gives her a shake. "I could have fixed things, Rose. I could have made them better. I could have made it _all better_ ," he spits, his voice growing hoarse as his volume mounts. He shakes her again for good measure, his grasp tightening until her leather jacket squeaks. "I could have stopped that battle, I could have saved so many lives—I could have saved you!"

"Bullshit!" Rose shouts.

The Doctor blinks at her in confusion, his chest heaving. " _What?_ "

Rose shoves at him, hard, and he loses his grip, stumbling backward out of surprise more than anything.

"This isn't about me," Rose says. She scrapes her knuckles across her cheek, smearing the windblown tear tracks there. When he doesn't respond, too angry and lost for words, she pushes him again. "This was never about me. And it isn't about other people, either. This was always about you, feeling sorry for yourself!"

"You don't know what you're talking about," he argues, but he can't look her in the eye when he says it.

"Oh, shut up," Rose snaps.

When the Doctor raises an eyebrow at that, Rose shoves him one last time, knocking him backward until his back smacks against a coral column. "I did not work for six years, fighting the impossible, doing the things you said that no one could do, giving everything I had, just for you to insult me," she chokes out. "Six years, Doctor. I'm sure that's just a speck to you, but for me, that's a long time. Working my fingers to the bone, working until I was sick or dropping from exhaustion, jumping from universe to universe and never knowing if I'd survive the trip, all just to get back to you!"

"Then why did you stop me?" the Doctor demands.

"Because it wasn't your decision to make!" Rose shouts, loud enough to make him jump. "And I'm not even talking about the fixed points or paradoxes or Reapers or any of that nonsense. You don't get to choose how everything happens, Doctor. You don't get to determine fate, you don't get to change the world to your design, you don't get to decide who lives and who dies!"

The Doctor lets out a nasty laugh. "And precisely who else is going to make those decisions?"

"You can't control everything," Rose says, forging ahead like she didn't hear him. "People need your help, I get that, but they don't need you to move them around like pieces on a chessboard. They need guidance. They need the truth. And they deserve to make their own choices."

"No matter how terrible those choices are?" the Doctor asks with a bite to his voice.

Rose nods gravely. "You can try to make it sound as noble as you like, but it's not. Not when you force things to be the way _you_ want them to be. It's not noble at all. It's selfish."

The Doctor's throat dries up, his anger with it.

(Six years later, and she still knows what words will cut him best.)

She's right. Of course she's right.

(He hates it when she's right. Gods, does he hate it.)

Rage abates and the Doctor feels hollow with it gone. Shame floods through in its stead.

His legs have turned to jelly, unable to support his weight anymore, and he slides down the column, landing on the grating with an elegant bang. The Doctor buries his face in his hands. He can't bear for anyone to see him right now, raw and naked as he feels. (Mortified that anyone, particularly Rose, would ever see him lose control like this.)

Half-tempted to ask Rose to leave, to give him some peace, the Doctor opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. It's just as well. As much as he hates himself for it, he still can't stand to be alone. Still can't stand to be without her.

The Doctor feels rather than hears Rose approach, her footfalls vibrating the grating beneath him. "I'm sorry," she offers.

"No, don't be," he says, his voice muffled by his palms. "You're not wrong."

"And you're not okay."

He doesn't reply. She's not wrong about that either.

"What's going on?" Rose asks.

When the Doctor still doesn't respond, Rose starts to fidget uncomfortably. It's the first display of uncertainty she's exhibited since she came onboard with her blue jacket armor and an attitude to match. Fingers twist around a hoop earring, weight shifts from one foot to the other. At least some things haven't changed.

"If it helps," Rose says, "I think I might be a little selfish too. So at least you're not alone. Right?"

The Doctor allows himself a small smile, drops his hands in his lap. Rose kneels beside him, stretching out one leg, then the other, as she plants her bum next to his. There is no question of personal space here; she snuggles up so close to him that even the idea of space between them is eliminated, so that he can feel the warmth of her leg pressed against his.

No white sparks jump out at her this time when she leans back. The TARDIS doesn't consider her a paradox anymore. The Doctor doesn't know why, but that's disappointing, somehow. Sort of like sticking a pin in a balloon and somehow being surprised when it deflates.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Rose asks.

"No," the Doctor says simply, his smile tightening. He gives a little shake of his head, a little shrug of his shoulders, and he hasn't felt this much like his Ninth self since he regenerated. "I really don't."

"It sort of seems like you might need to."

"You know, people always say that, but I'm not so sure. Humans, in particular, seem to think you can solve all your problems by simply talking them away."

"Isn't that pretty much what you do?" Rose teases, nudging him with her shoulder.

The Doctor shoots her an annoyed glance. But it's only a little annoyed. "Your observations are obnoxiously insightful."

"Not bad for 'only human,' huh?"

The words sting. But the Doctor imagines they hurt her more than they hurt him. He suddenly finds his clasped hands in his lap to be fascinating.

"I can't tell you what you want to know," he says after a moment, his brain working overtime to choose phrases as carefully as possible. He's already almost-destroyed the universe once; he's not in any great hurry to do it again. "And before you ask, it's certainly a matter of _can't_ , not _won't_."

He pinches the bridge of his nose in an effort to fend off his lingering time-migraine. "You already know too much as it is. No telling how it's influenced your decisions up to this point. Anything more could compromise the timelines to a dramatic degree, no matter how carefully you try to avoid it. And that's a bell you really can't un-ring."

Rose fidgets with her earring again. "What if you could, though?"

"What do you mean?"

She hesitates. "Why did you come back to see me, all of those times?"

"I told you," he says impatiently. "I missed you—having you around. It wasn't a lie. I just omitted the fact that you happened to be in another universe at the time."

"And is that why you tried to change things at Canary Wharf? Or did you do it because all of this happened after I came back, and despite everything…"

Rose draws in a deep, shaky breath. Like she's bracing herself. "…we're still not together?"

The Doctor closes his eyes in an effort to shut her out. It doesn't work. He can still sense her there, watching him. And he knows his silence says more than he ever could.

"Look. Earlier, when…" Rose stammers. "Earlier, you said there was a solution, if there were things I didn't want to remember anymore. You said you could make me forget."

"I was babbling," the Doctor says quickly.

"Okay. Maybe you were. But if you weren't…"

She scoots back so that she can look him fully in the face, so that he can see the resolution firm in her eyes. "Doctor, I love you."

He starts at that, lips parting, panic and something like relief rising in equal measure, but Rose just shakes her head, cutting him off before any words can stutter out of his mouth. "I love you, and I want to help you, but I also think after everything that's happened, I'm entitled to some answers," she says. Then, slower, her words heavy with meaning: "Even if I won't remember them."

The panic that threatened to rise before now finishes its journey, pushing its way out of the Doctor's throat in a strangled laugh that echoes wildly in the console room. His head falls back against the coral strut with a _thud_ , hysterical laughter choking him and wracking his body. Eyes stinging, chest heaving, he thinks he can pinpoint the exact moment his respiratory bypass kicks in to prevent hyperventilation. His ribcage aches with effort.

"Brilliant," he laughs. "And here I thought the day couldn't possibly get any worse. Oh, it's lovely to be so wrong about so many things, isn't it?"

Rose waits patiently for the last of his choking laughs to die off before she speaks again. "Doctor, I'm serious."

"So am I," the Doctor says, dragging his hands through his hair.

"Look, I don't like it any more than you do. But it's like you said, I already know too much. I could say something, or do something, without even meaning to, and the younger you might figure everything out, might change things that he shouldn't," Rose reasons, her voice thick with emotion. She blinks the wetness out of her eyes. "So you're gonna have to erase my memories anyway, aren't you? Shouldn't you?"

"You can't possibly know what you're asking," the Doctor snaps, pushing up off the floor. He needs to escape. Run away, walk away, it doesn't matter as long as he's anywhere but here.

A few long strides give him some distance, some air to breathe. Head swimming, he sways a little on his feet. He has to grab the rail for support.

"I'm sorry," the Doctor says. "You're just going to have to do a bang-up job pretending, I guess. Because I can't do this for you."

"It's not just for me," Rose reminds him, her voice soft.

When the Doctor doesn't respond right away, his mind racing to try to think of any argument he can use about why not—any argument that doesn't involve Donna, he can't think about Donna right now, can't bear the memory, not unless he wants to scream—he hears Rose stand up behind him, her steps quiet as she approaches. Placing her hand over his, she gently uncurls his fingers from the railing, threading their fingers together.

The Doctor thinks, not for the first time, about how strange all of this is. Six years since she last held his hand and he was kissing her passionately not half an hour ago.

"Just let me know, just tell me the truth, for once," Rose tries again. "For both of us."

The Doctor considers, playing for time, weighing the consequences. Even outside of the trauma of removing someone else's memories—which is quite bad enough on its own, thanks—he has no desire to dissolve the walls and let anybody in, not really, not even now. If it's all almost too much for him to bear, he can only imagine how horrible it will be for one small human, trying to make sense of timelines and foreign emotions and event after painful event and dubious Time Lord morality. Rose has always been understanding (usually got a blind spot the size of Jupiter as far as he's concerned, he knows that), but he's not exactly eager to test the boundaries more than he already has. Surely telling her everything, even if he erases the confessions from her memory immediately afterward, can only cause more harm than good.

Still, he can't help but notice that his time sense, returned in full and pulsing in the corners of his subconscious, ever-present like a third heartbeat, is chiming quietly once again. Which, aside from being a good sign that time has stopped degrading, means that he has an important decision to make.

And so does she, he realizes.

A slow breath leaves his body, tension leaking out with it. Blimey. He knows she loves him—of course he knows, he's always known—but he's never felt it as viscerally, as much like a physical, tangible force pulling deep in his gut, as he does right now. He can't believe she's still here with him, willing to take on this burden with him, willing to _trust_ him, even after everything. It's a revelation that leaves him feeling both quietly joyful and woefully inadequate.

"You know, I don't think I deserve you," he admits.

"Nope," Rose says, the corners of her mouth turning up in a grin. "I'm just too good."

He sends her a watery smile in response. "Quite right, too."

Every instinct in every fiber of his being screams at him to escape, run and leave. But he thinks maybe he should ignore his instincts, just this once. It isn't like they've done him much good, of late.

(And if she won't remember…well. As much as he hates to admit it, there is a certain amount of freedom in that.)

Inhaling strongly (the deep breath before the dive, he thinks), he turns toward her, guides her by the shoulders until she faces him fully. Rose doesn't say anything when he raises his hands toward her head. She does, however, look at him questioningly.

(The Doctor catches a glimpse-memory of Donna, standing next to the console just like Rose, looking up at him with tears in her eyes while she promises and pleads for _forever_. The thought of it makes him nauseous. No matter how he tries to tell himself this is different…it sure as hell doesn't feel like it.)

"You've seen me do this before," the Doctor says. "But I'm not looking for anything this time. Your thoughts are safe. This is only to transmit, not to receive. And it's the fastest way to tell you everything you want—everything you need to know."

Concern flashes in her face, but Rose doesn't stop him.

"Are you sure about this?" he asks, even though he already knows what the answer will be.

She nods.

The Doctor presses his fingertips against her temples, feels her pulse bleat beneath his fingertips. The bright, warm expanse of her mind flutters at the edges of his consciousness, golden and melodious like a song.

He really, really hopes she doesn't hate him after this.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs. "But this is probably going to hurt."

Before Rose has a chance to change her mind, the Doctor closes his eyes, lowers his barriers, opens a connection.

* * *

 _He stands outside a house in London; the sky is dark and snow is falling_

(The Doctor takes her back to the regeneration into his Ninth body. Rose tenses, but she doesn't pull away. He wants to show her as much as they both can stand, because without context, truth is meaningless.)

 _There's a man here with his memories and his name. They devour him from the inside, eating away until there's nothing left but sorrow and the need to_ run

Before the Time War, he would have done anything to break free from the loneliness. Afterward, he would do anything to be free of the shame. The knowledge that he had no one but himself to blame for it all.

 _They've just escaped a planet ravaged by death, and a woman tells him about the darkness, about four knocks that will rattle his bones_

In those days, Rose was a distraction, albeit a very welcome one.

 _He's trapped, imprisoned in a tiny metal bus and his own mind, held hostage by something he cannot see or hear or sense or even remotely understand, and a cluster of frightened humans debate whether or not they have license to murder him_

(Shuddering, Rose whimpers.)

 _A woman from his future sacrifices herself for him. Donna places her hands over his and helps him shoulder some of the burden in Pompeii. He lifts his hands and obliterates her memory and her light is that much dimmer and he's alone again_

She was so bright and new, and the universe was bright and new again through her eyes. Rose gave him a chance to rewrite himself, and he took that chance.

(The Doctor's arms tremble, but the motion isn't his—Rose is shaking, shivering like she stands out in the cold. The Doctor opens his eyes to see that her cheeks are wet with tears.)

 _He spends a year saturated in all of the agonies of a body collecting a millennium of hurt. He looks on helplessly as Jack and Martha's family are tormented and broken. He wills Martha to walk just a little bit further, to bloody her feet just a little bit more_

(He doesn't show her the Master. He can't tell her everything. He just can't.)

 _Martha is left out or behind, over and over and over again. Well-earned shame and humility are his only companions when she decides she's finally had enough_

Distraction gave way to companionship and gradually, other things peeked through the paint, familiarity and warmth and just a smidgen of affection and a pinch of over-protectiveness and something that felt an awful lot like jealousy if he thought about it too much.

 _A witch tries to break him using Rose's name. He starts a flood to save the world and barely moves to save himself_

He sent her away to keep her safe.

 _He burns up a star to say goodbye_

But she looked into the heart of the TARDIS and ended a war the same way he did. How could she have followed in his footsteps so exactly when he'd kept her safe from all of that? From him?

 _He leaves her stranded on a beach in Norway and the hurt is so good so savagely delicious so perfectly suited to what he deserves that he does it twice_

(Rose's breathing grows rough and her nails bite into the backs of his hands until they draw blood.)

He knew he ruined everything he touched, but how could he have corrupted her without even trying?

 _He has never looked in a mirror before and felt jealous of his reflection. But he keeps this face to keep her and he can't even manage that in the end_

Their first kiss, and he pulled death from her lips. He felt it a fitting epilogue. Reward and retribution all wrapped together.

(She's muttering; from her lips falls a broken chorus of _no, no, no_.)

 _She won't understand when his face changes, when he leaves her behind, when he sends her away, when the stars can come back but she can't, when he calls her name while he falls_

If she truly was the catalyst for his redemption, then what would happen to him when she was gone?

 _He sentences a family to a lifetime of torture. He traps a coven in a crystal globe. Children die in the wake of his cowardice. A clever young man blows up an army and himself in the process. He powers a rocket with his hubris and somehow manages to be surprised when Utopia isn't real, it's a bunch of shattered promises and a fate worse than death. He drowns his fears and his anger and he tells himself he wouldn't do it if she was there to stop him_

Because she made him better, and he didn't deserve to be. Because even though the universe gave her to him, the universe is not kind.

 _She wraps her hand around his, she presses a kiss to his lips, she walks and she runs and she laughs and she listens and he feels, oh, he feels so much, and he sees, and he wants, and she's so splendidly selfish and selfless and greedy and giving and she loves him, she's like a supernova trapped in a human frame, she burns so brightly, she burns all of his sins away_

 _And one day she'll be dust and ash_

(Rose grabs at his shirt to steady herself. He wills her to hold on just a little bit longer.)

 _He will save everyone, he will change the world as he sees fit, he will bend time to his design, he will spare Adelaide Brooke and he will save Rose and he will save himself and four knocks won't mean anything anymore. He will fear nothing. He will be victorious. He will never lose anything or anyone ever again, not lovers or children or family or friends. He will conquer time itself and the universe will bow to his whim and he will rewrite morality, good and evil, right and wrong, as he deems fit, and he will not die before he's had a chance to make everything right, he won't, he won't, he won't_

(Her pulse speeds to a dangerous tempo; her breathing hitches; the blood drains from her face; she still doesn't pull away.)

 _The sky is dark and snow is falling and a gunshot splits the silence_

Though he doesn't mean to, throughout it all, he can't stop himself from funneling into her his anger, his deepest self-loathing, his darkest despair.

* * *

"Do you see now?" he asks, knowing full well that she is long past the point of being able to hear anything over the roaring in her head. "Do you understand?"

With one last sharp gasp for breath, Rose loses consciousness. The connection between them darkens. Rose's body goes loose and she crumples, a puppet with its strings severed and heart bruised. The Doctor catches her before she can fall. He plants a kiss on one temple, easing her into his arms so he can hold her close. He counts the seconds between her breaths and doesn't relax until they peter off to something resembling a normal pace.

Slowly, the Doctor feels something loosen in his chest. It is not a pleasant sensation. It's like he was stabbed in the ribs, and someone finally took out the knife. Probably better in the long run but now he's got all this bleeding to deal with. But it isn't like the knife could have stayed in there forever.

He sits there for a long time, waiting for the bleeding to stop.

* * *

 _But I'll make no more ado, I'll go boldly and look_

 _I'll go boldly_

 _go boldly and_

The Doctor sighs. For hours (days, years) he's tried to get through this book, only to get stuck on this page with words repeating like a broken record in his head. He's not sure how many times he has read this same passage, waiting for Rose to wake up. But so far, her body has stirred far more than her consciousness, limbs rustling in the bedclothes and making the Doctor jump every time he hears so much as a whisper of cloth against cloth. He turns the page—what's a few missed words between friends?—to see if he will have any better luck elsewhere.

 _His eyes met mine so keen and fierce, I_

"I can't believe you leave me on that godforsaken beach again."

Fingers stilling between pages, the Doctor looks up to find Rose's eyes sliding slowly open, her face pointed toward the ceiling. He waits for her to continue.

Rose raises a heavy arm to wipe at the corners of her eyes. "I used to like the beach, you know. Not so much anymore."

"Give it time," the Doctor replies, pushing up his glasses so he can pretend to start reading again. "A couple weeks, a couple months, you'll be eager to get right back to the world of sunburns, salty winds, and shark-infested waters."

"Have they got sharks in Norway?"

The Doctor pauses, considers. "You know, I don't know. But I think probably not."

Rose falls quiet, and out of the corner of his eye the Doctor watches as she takes in the room, gaze traveling over the coral-lined walls, the lights in the alcoves, the barrenness of it all. Except for the white-blanketed bed, and both of their jackets and shoes heaped haphazardly in the corner next to the Doctor's overstuffed armchair, the room is empty, completely void of décor or personality.

"Where am I?" she asks.

The Doctor turns another page he didn't read. "This would be my room."

Rose _hmphs_ at that, and he isn't sure whether she's more surprised that he actually has a room, or that he brought her there.

She turns on her side to face him, snuggling deeper into the covers. "Your bed is more comfortable than mine was. You've been holding out on your companions."

"I'll have to keep that in mind," the Doctor chuckles.

"Will you take a new companion now?"

His eyes lose their focus and he finds himself unable to look at the book at all anymore. Removing his spectacles, he stows the book away, tucking it next to him in the armchair. He places his glasses on top. "I don't know," he admits. "Probably not. Doesn't really seem fair to them, with my impending expiration date and all."

"I'm sorry," Rose tells him.

He scratches the back of his neck. "Sorry about the lack of a companion, or sorry that I'm going to die?"

Rose flinches at that. "Both. All of it. About…Canary Wharf, and the Valiant, and Pompeii. And Martha, and Mars. And Donna. God. Just everything."

"Ah," the Doctor replies. He smiles wistfully. "Thanks."

Biting her lip in nervousness, Rose pulls the blanket back, uncovering herself and exposing a patch of the mattress next to her. She pats the bed with a hopeful look in her eye. "Just for a minute?"

He's too tired to protest.

Moments later, he's settled in the bed next to her. Rose reaches over to take his hand in hers and he turns on his side, toward her, to give her better access. She frowns when she sees the tiny red crescents dug in the trenches of his knuckles.

"Danger of the job," the Doctor says. He doesn't know how much she remembers, if she knows that the wounds match the curve of her nails. "Don't worry, I earned it."

Rose doesn't argue, but she does hold his hand a little more carefully than she normally would, watching as her forefinger strokes the inside of his. He hopes she doesn't see it when he shudders at the sensation.

"I really hoped I could stay," Rose confesses quietly. "I mean…I don't know. I guess I'm glad I won't have to leave Mum or Tony. Pretty sure Mum knows what I've been planning. She's pretty torn up about it. And…"

"And you would be pretty torn up, too."

"Yeah," Rose says. "But I've just, god, I've worked so hard. For a long time, seeing you again was the thing that kept me going. I was so sure that I'd get to stay, that all of this happened before I came back permanently. I'd stay and we would be happy. Both of us. You know?"

"I know."

"Why did you do it?"

He could play stupid, ask what she means, but that feels like too much of an insult. "What else could I do?"

Rose shrugs. "Could have asked, I guess. If I wanted to stay. If I wanted…him. The other you."

"I don't know. Maybe if I had to do it all over again—"

"You would do the exact same thing."

The Doctor watches the play of their fingers, finds it easier than looking her in the eye. "Probably." He sighs, dragging his free hand over his face. "Definitely. Especially knowing what I know now."

"See, that's what I don't get," Rose says, pushing herself up by the elbows so she can look down at him. "Someone tells you you're going to die, and you don't even question it? Why?"

He can't make his gaze meet hers. He had wondered when she would bring that up. He's surprised she managed to hold onto the words this long, wonders how many more will fly out now that she has opened the cage.

"Why?" Rose presses when he doesn't answer. "You don't believe in things like prophecy or predestination—"

"Prophecy, predestination, fixed point. What's the difference?"

"There's a world of difference," Rose argues. "Isn't there? Isn't that the sort of thing you'd say? That there's no such thing as fate?"

"Maybe I was wrong."

"No," Rose says, shaking her head. "There's got to be something we can do."

"Rose—"

"No," Rose repeats, louder this time, pulling her hand away from his and leaving his fingers cold and empty. "You can't just give up. That's what you would tell me. You would tell me, you'd say that there's always a way out. There's always hope," she says, her bottom lip trembling as her words pick up in speed. "There's always a way to fight. You don't just let things happen. You take control, you push back, you make a speech, you find a solution, you do the impossible, you don't just lie down and take it, you don't just let yourself die!"

"You think I want this to happen?" the Doctor asks, frustrated.

"I think you must, otherwise you'd be figuring out a way around it," Rose insists. "Wouldn't you?"

He doesn't say anything. He can't. He just stares at her, bewildered.

(Even after he shared everything—as much as he could bear—how does she still not understand? How can she not _see_?)

"Rose," the Doctor says, his voice low, "I can't keep fighting this. I showed you what happens when I try. You saw it earlier. Whether it's regeneration, or the end of the line, I—"

He steels himself, realizing the truth even as he says it. "I can't run away anymore."

Rose's mouth falls open, like she might protest, but she doesn't say anything. Eyes glittering with tears, she looks away, fiercely swiping her cheek with the heel of her palm. The Doctor watches her. Forces himself not to turn away, not to give in to discomfort. Hesitantly, he reaches out and brushes the last of her tears away with his thumb.

"I'm sorry," he says.

Turning toward him, Rose's features soften. She leans forward and wraps her arms around the Doctor in an embrace so tight that her shoulder pops. He loops his arms around her, gives her what he hopes is a reassuring squeeze, drawing her in as snugly as possible. Rose buries her face in the crook of his neck. The Doctor half-expects his throat and shirt collar to become damp with her tears, for Rose's shoulder's to shake with the force of her sobs—even if it hasn't happened all that often, he has comforted her enough times to know how this sort of thing usually goes. But she's still, and strangely silent. Somehow, that's even worse.

(Six years is a long time to fight the impossible. Six years is a long time to build up hope.)

"I'm sorry," he says again. "I know this isn't what you worked for."

"No," Rose sighs, her breath warm on his neck. "It really isn't. But that doesn't matter."

The Doctor swallows. "At least you still get a happy ending. That's not nothing. Right?"

Rose stiffens in his arms. She draws back to look at him, her gaze hard.

"Rose, he really is everything I am," the Doctor tells her earnestly. "He's me. Well, he's me without the second heart or the last few months of spectacularly bad decision-making. But he's got the same memories, all the same feelings, that I always have."

Rose's brow furrows and he tries to stop, but the words wash over faster than he can batten down the hatches. "I didn't just shove some copy off on you, tuck you both out of the way for convenience's sake. Certainly not out of some misguided sense of nobility or selflessness. It really is just the best decision, given the circumstances, especially given this particular set of circumstances. Because I just knew. Deep down, I always knew something like this was going to happen. Not the specifics of it, perhaps, but our parting was inevitable. One way or the other, one of us would vastly outlive the other. You've never had that happen—you don't know what it's like. And it wouldn't be fair to ask you to say, not when you've got a family over there, a family and a job and friends and a life and you'd already given it all up for me before. For once, it was time for me to give something up for—"

—and suddenly his mouth is meeting resistance as the mattress pulls with shifting weight and the distance between them closes and soft lips press gently against his.

His heartsbeat pounds in his chest and his blood rushes in his ears. Still not an expert, but he's fairly certain he's being kissed again.

"—you," the Doctor breathes when Rose pulls away. She's just far enough that he can see her pupils dilating by micrometers, just close enough that he can feel the warmth of her exhale. He licks his lips, tastes the evidence of two different kisses from two different versions of her. Gestures than span more than half a decade.

"Doing things in the improper order again?" he asks.

"No." She leans forward and kisses him again, more insistently this time. He can feel her teeth in it. Her hands snake up his shirtfront, landing at the top to grab a fistful. "I've waited six years for this," she says into his mouth, "and you won't stop talking."

The Doctor laughs breathlessly, the sound bleached of mirth. "I thought you wanted to talk."

"Not anymore," she says, moving to kiss his jaw, the space beneath his ear. His pulse quickens at her touch and his hands itch to hold her. "Talking is stupid," Rose continues, slipping the top button out of its buttonhole, moving quickly to the next. "This whole thing is stupid. None of it means a damn thing."

"Rose—" he starts to protest, but it's a halfhearted gesture, and they both know it.

"Tell me to stop," she says, her lips brushing the side of his neck, and there's no suppressing the shiver that runs through him at that. "Tell me to stop, and I promise I will. But if I'm never gonna see you again—"

"You will," he says, and his hands have found their way to her waist somehow.

"Fine. But are you ever going to see me again?"

His jaw clenches. Hands fist in her shirt. He's dimly glad she isn't looking at his face right now, because he is certain it is the very picture of utter wretchedness.

Rose slips the last of his shirt-buttons free, goes to work on his trousers. "Doctor," she says, and his name sounds like a prayer. "Does arguing really seem like a good way to waste our last—"

"Stop," he bites out, his voice sharp as it cuts hers in half.

True to her word, Rose complies. Her fingers still their progress on his trousers and her hands draw back. But the Doctor grabs her by the wrists before she can move away, pulls her back in like gravity and covers her mouth with a hard kiss.

"Stop talking," he says against her lips.

(He doesn't want to know how that sentence was going to end.)

Neither of them utter another word.


	6. Part Six

When he comes to, she's gone.

Well, not _gone_ gone, he thinks, not unless she left naked. Two sets of garments are strewn about the place, hers mixed with his, tossed to the floor and hiding under the furniture and wound up in the blankets. But the Doctor opens his eyes to find the other side of the bed unoccupied, and for the first time, it seems strange. He has never thought of a bed as something that could be empty before.

Locating his trousers and his tee-shirt, he pulls them on and tries not to wince. Cotton and wool scratch over tender skin, the wounds on his knuckles reminding him of their presence with a sting. But already they've begun to heal. It's almost pathetic, how disappointed he is by that.

He finds Rose in the galley.

Unable to think of anything that doesn't sound awkward, or even worse, dismissive, or even worse than that, pithy and sticky-sweet, the Doctor stops in the doorway to watch her for a moment. Rose wears his shirt and not much else, stands on her tiptoes as she roots around in the freezer. The sight of her searching for a snack, something he used to see quite often once upon a time, brings a smile to his face. Makes something swell a little in his chest, leaving him feeling almost uncomfortably tender.

"Sorry," Rose says, closing the freezer door and smiling shyly at him. Her cheeks are pink, her hair is disheveled, and two spoons and three cartons of ice cream are clutched to her bosom, slowly dampening the front of (his) half-button oxford. "Bit peckish."

"When is the last time you ate?"

"Depends. Do you want me to lie, or do you want to be angry with me?"

The Doctor grimaces at that. "We have more substantial food onboard."

Rose's smile slips, and the Doctor catches himself. "I mean, I have more substantial food onboard," he amends, his voice stiff. "Not, you know. You and me."

"And here I thought you meant the royal _we_ ," Rose teases.

"Ah, yes," the Doctor says, and he can't help but relax a little. "In that case, _we_ also have other things in the galley, and _we_ would be happy to share them, and…" he trails off, stepping closer so he can pull on his rolled-up shirtsleeve on her arm, "… _we_ can't help but notice that you're wearing my shirt."

"Yeah, well. I couldn't find mine quickly enough, so you're just going to have to deal with this one smelling like me for a bit," Rose says, catching the tip of her tongue between her teeth as she smiles.

The Doctor grins down at her. He can't help it; her smile is contagious and it's something he somehow never built up a resistance to.

"We can live with that," he murmurs, before bending down to kiss her.

Rose's mouth parts under his and he closes his eyes, losing himself in the kiss. Hints of chocolate and mint let him know that she's got into the ice cream already; he chases after the sugar-sweet taste, gently exploring her lips and beyond. Trapped between their bodies, the ice cream cartons are almost unbearably cold and unpleasant, spreading an icy dampness across the Doctor's tee shirt and dripping onto the floor, but he barely notices, crushing the cartons as he moves in closer. His hand travels up to cradle Rose's head, his fingers tangling in her hair.

There is nothing urgent or demanding about their kiss this time. It could almost feel like nothing is wrong, like they have all the time in the world.

"How long have we got?" Rose murmurs into his mouth.

"We're in the Vortex," he replies, trailing his lips down to her neck. He smiles when she shivers. It could just be the ice cream, but he doesn't think so. "Time is irrelevant."

Rose pulls back, but he doesn't need her questioning expression or his aching time sense to know that he's lying. As much as he wants to delay the inevitable, as much as he doesn't want to do what he knows he must, the longer she stays displaced from her own time and universe, the greater the likelihood of something happening that shouldn't. (That can't.)

"At least a few hours?" she asks. "I want to be here as long as I can, but the longer I stay, the harder it'll be to go."

"Surely we can have a few days," he tells her, bridging the small distance between them.

"Twelve hours," she protests feebly.

"Forty-eight."

"Twenty-four."

"Terribly cliché," the Doctor replies. "I'll take it."

Before she has a chance to reply, he pulls one carton out of her hands and tosses it over his shoulder. It lands somewhere behind him with a wet splat and the other two fall away when he hoists Rose onto the counter, ice cream and spoons thudding and clanging to the floor near his feet.

* * *

Time dilation is a phenomenon experienced by nearly every sentient being, on nearly every planet in nearly every universe; Time Lords are no exception. When you live as long as they do, time is basically a piece of taffy, stretching and pooling and thinning and doubling back on itself and re-merging and splitting off, drawn out or crammed together or savored as the consumer pleases. And then of course there are the days that there's not enough taffy, never enough, and you barely have a chance to hold it in your hands before it's melted and gone.

They don't talk about how little taffy they have left.

Instead, after the rumbling of Rose's stomach becomes too loud to ignore, the Doctor whips up a quick eggy-in-the-basket for them both. She teases him when he burns the bread; he replies by wiping his buttery fingers off on her thigh. (She smacks him in the arm for that, but it's worth it to hear her shriek in faux-outrage.)

They chat while they eat, reminiscing mostly. Tiptoeing around almost everything that's happened in the years they were apart, except for when Rose tells him fondly of Tony. The Doctor pastes a smile on his face and doesn't think about how he very nearly wrote her brother out of existence just a few short hours ago.

He takes her on an impromptu tour of the TARDIS—they don't call it that, of course, because calling it that acknowledges how long it's been since she had a proper walkabout in there, how she'll never get to do it again. Rose remembers the way from the galley to the library, from the library to the pool, from the pool to the garden. The TARDIS hums pleasantly in the back of their minds, and when Rose asks about it, the Doctor explains that she's happy to see Rose again, happy in her own strange way. Rose smiles and runs her fingers along the walls, over the books and through the grass; he smiles too and keeps his eyes trained on her.

"Run," he whispers in her ear when things become too quiet, and he pulls her to the console room, two sets of footsteps echoing through the corridors along with their laughs. Both of them bound around the console, dodging the tools that still lie about on the grating. His hands fly over the controls and he asks her where she'd like to go next.

It's a game. A play-pretend. She sees through it immediately.

She tells him to take her to an ice planet. No, a desert planet. No! One of those places with the bioluminescent caves, with the bird-moths that glitter like little neon green stars in the black night, and that's where they met the Duchy of Thebaine, and does he remember—?

Of course he remembers, but he likes the story the way she tells it. She likes the way he kisses her, after.

With a flourish, the Doctor charts courses for Byglis, then sixty-second century London, Meiji-era Japan, the Big Bang. He falls just short of pushing the routes through, but that doesn't matter; with his words, he transports Rose all the same. He tells her about all of the things they see, the things he shows her, the crystalline mountains and biosynthetic supercomputers and the Tokugawa Shogunate; she pipes up with the details of their adventures in each time and place.

(The mountains were actually alive all along. Someone's hacked into the supercomputers and learned to control the population. Kyoto is overrun with shape-shifting aliens and the emperor's son has fallen in love with one of them, someone who can take the shape of a fox; the shape-shifter must return home and the prince must marry, but every night for the rest of his life, the prince leaves a gap in a palace window that's just big enough for a fox to slip through.)

The Big Bang is almost too good to pass up. So the Doctor decides to cheat just the littlest bit; he pilots them to the far corner of the universe, to the year 4 million BCE, and with a complicated bit of jiggery-pokery that pings his time sense and stretches the limits of what the TARDIS will allow, he sets their timeflow so that they can watch the birth of a star unfurl in fast-motion. Of course, fast-motion still means it will take several hours to complete, from their perspective, but that's a fair sight better than a hundred thousand years. The Doctor opens the TARDIS doors and Rose gasps at the view, at the brilliant violence spreading slowly before her. Gases swirl in vibrant hues of scarlet and cerulean, matter sparkling in the darkness, and when Rose holds out her arm, the light dances over her skin.

It's not the Big Bang. But it's close enough.

"Can we?" Rose asks, and the two of them sit down in the doorway, to stargaze like they used to, oh-so-long ago.

(To say he watches her instead of the nebula would be a lie. But he relishes the warmth of her body pressed up against his, their bare feet swinging out idly into space. He memorizes the way their fingers intertwine, maps the pressure points of their palms, counts the beats of her pulse pounding in her thumb. Smiles at her cheek cushioned on his shoulder. Tells her about how stars are made, and catalogs every response. It's almost uncomfortable, this sort of intimacy; it's quiet and domestic and vulnerable and close. Probably the other him won't have much trouble with it, he thinks—probably the metacrisis Doctor will crave it, even. Human tendencies magnified exponentially by human DNA.

Lucky bastard.)

They leave the doors open when they finally get up, when Rose leads him by the hand over to the jumpseat. Light streams in from the nebula and paints Rose's skin like watercolor, illuminating her until she glows with otherworldly light.

"I love you," she whispers into his ear, pressing her lips there.

Warmth floods through him and he pulls her in for a bruising kiss.

"I love you," she gasps when they part, cupping his face in her hands so she can touch her lips to his chin, his cheeks, his forehead, his lips again. "I love you, I love you, _please_ —"

He never could deny her anything.

(He still doesn't look at her, during, but he wraps his arms around her snugly, committing to memory the feel of her bare skin on his, the way her curves glow in the starlight.)

They don't hold each other very long, at least not immediately after. It quickly becomes too uncomfortable to stay on the jumpseat; it's a curious mixture of being both too-hot and too-cold and sticky and sore all at once. (But her hand never leaves his, not when he closes and locks the TARDIS doors, not when he pilots them back into the Vortex, not even when it makes things a little awkward as they're gathering up their clothes; he teases her and she replies with a kiss below his wounded knuckles.)

They quickly wash up. (But he'll never forget, for however much time he has left, the way her face lights up when he decides to join her in the bath, how she smiles when he wraps his arms around her. His fingers dance along her ribs and his nose and lips trace down her neck and she laughs as she squirms, ticklish, water running down her body in rivulets. The Doctor thinks of kissing her in the rain and he grins, glad they've got a chance to do it again.)

They pull their clothes back on, their own clothes, even his oxford that now smells of her; they dress in silence. (But the moment they're both done, they crawl back into his bed. Their bodies draw near and limbs entangle, their weight settling into the mattress like a pair of stones. He reads her a passage from his book and he wishes she wouldn't fall asleep, but he knows she can't help it; she walked a long road even before she found him, even before she saved him from himself, and she fights and loses the battle quickly. He breathes in the scent of her hair and counts the seconds along with her breaths.)

They hold each other for a long time after that.

* * *

The Doctor knows precisely when their time will run out, but the ringing of the Cloister Bell sets it in stone.

Rose tries to smile as they exit the TARDIS, heaves a sigh instead, air leaving her body in a loud and painful burst.

"So I guess this is it, then?" she asks, stepping into an alleyway in London, 2006.

He nods.

Drawing in a deep breath, Rose fortifies her defenses; the Doctor looks on as she girds herself with a tough outer shell once again. He doesn't like that she does that now. Hates the thought that she probably picked it up from him.

"Don't suppose there's any chance I'll get to hear the end of that sentence?" she asks. "Just—the last time I saw you, it was the younger you, and it sounded like you were gonna say—"

He shifts uncomfortably, and she struggles not to roll her eyes. "I know there's a lot of ways to show it," she tells him. "Other words and actions, or sometimes without saying or doing anything at all—"

"You know how I feel," he says, scratching the back of his neck as he looks away.

"—and I think you must love me," she continues, "even if you don't say it. I don't think you would blow up stars or tear up universes or make special calls from the future for just anyone. But—"

"Like you said," he interrupts. "Lots of ways to say it. Some of them just hurt more than others."

He swallows. "Some of them feel too much like goodbye."

Rose stares at him. "Doctor, this _is_ goodbye."

"So it is," he replies, as cheerfully as he can muster, muscling past the sensation that something is squeezing painfully inside him. "Let me just say…"

She watches him hopefully, and he curses himself once again for his cowardice, for what he's about to say, and what he'll do after.

"…you were brilliant," he tells her, and watches the hope on her face go dark. "Utterly brilliant. Fantastic, even. Always have been, always will be."

"Right," Rose says, disappointed.

After a moment of standing about awkwardly, Rose steps forward and throws her arms around his neck, drawing his body flush against hers. He wraps his arms around her in response. Buries his face in her hair.

"I wouldn't have traded this for anything," Rose tells him. "Not a single moment of it."

The something in his chest squeezes harder. He squeezes her tighter in response. "Me neither."

He closes his eyes. "Thank you," he says quietly. "For everything."

Stepping back, Rose nods, bites her lip. "I hope it's not really the end," she rushes out, clutching his hands in hers. "I mean—I hope things turn out differently than you think, and that you won't be alone for much longer, and—and even if you can't say it back to me, I love you, and I always will, no matter what."

He smiles grimly down at their hands. His hearts race in his ribcage, thundering like they'll leap out at any moment. He can feel it; this is the moment to say something. The urge to speak rushes through him, swoops in his stomach and floods in his skull.

He has to say it now. _He has to_.

"Are you ready?" he asks, and goodness, does he ever hate himself.

"As I'll ever be," she laughs, and now his grin is genuine too, searing this moment in his memory.

He pulls his hands from hers, settling his fingers against her temples. She's warm, flushing beneath his fingertips. Rose watches him openly, eyes wide and lips pressed tightly together in an expression of absolute, unadulterated trust. Anxiety roiling in his throat, the Doctor forces himself to hold her gaze, knowing it will be the last opportunity he has to do so.

He almost falters, nearly pulls away. But he's got to go through with it. He can't allow himself to be selfish. Not this time.

Brushing stray strands of hair behind her ear, his thumb grazes over her cheek, and he doesn't know why that's the thing that breaks him, but it is, and it does. Telltale pressure builds up in his sinuses and as much as he begs his body not to do this, not to betray him, he can feel moisture welling up in the corners of his eyes.

Rose frowns. "Doctor?"

The Doctor leans in for one last kiss, his lips pressed in hungry desperation against hers.

He opens the link before she can say or see anything else.

Rose's eyes shutter closed almost instantly, her mouth falling open. The Doctor finds everything he shared with her quite easily, shining bright and clear on the surface of her mind. Memories that aren't hers, visions of diamond planets and erupting volcanoes and the end of the Time War, stand out against the rest. He draws them out, all of them, coaxing like a violinist with their finger creating a vibrato on the smallest string.

The relief he feels from her is almost instantaneous; it was, as he suspected, all too much for her to bear. He strokes her temples with his thumbs and says a silent thank-you, for sharing his grief and his shame for as long as she could.

When that's over and done with, he finds her thoughts of the last twenty-four hours that they had together, the newest strands of her memories. He lights on them, and even though his touch is gentle, Rose whimpers, her mouth twisting in unhappiness.

"I'm sorry," the Doctor says. His breathing hitches and his vision goes blurry, and when the tears have obscured her face completely, he blinks them away. Cinches his eyes shut. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I—"

The Doctor watches the last twenty-four hours play out in her mind and he hesitates, the unfairness of it all hitting him like a punch to the gut, leaving him winded afterward.

(Can't he be just a little bit selfish? Just the littlest, tiniest bit? Just one last time? It seems unbearably cruel to take these memories away forever, especially since they won't have any effect once she's safe in her own universe again—)

And then he realizes.

"I'm an idiot," he says.

Laughing, he shakes his head. He's never been so glad to be wrong before.

"Oh, Rose," he says breathlessly. "I'm so sorry I didn't think of it sooner. I'm an idiot. I hope you can forgive me."

Holding as tightly as he can without hurting her, the Doctor diverts his course of action.

He doesn't remove their last twenty-four hours together. Instead, he hides it, embeds it so deeply that even the thought of the thought doesn't exist. His consciousness is like a river, flowing gently over her memories and burying them beneath layers of silt. The memories are hidden, but they're still there, waiting to be found.

The Doctor suppresses a memory of a blue-sanded beach, a tour through London, a trip to Saturn, an embrace in the forests of Kepler-438b. He pushes further and finds memories of soft grass and a declaration under the stars. He obscures all evidence of that as well.

(He hunts down her memories of stepping foot inside a blood-red TARDIS, of convincing him to end an apocalypse of his own making, of forgiving him after; he's tempted to say a permanent good riddance to those, but he knows that wouldn't be right. She deserves to have her memories intact, the bad along with the good.)

Pulling disparate strands together, he helps her synapses fire in the temporary absence of information, urging her brain to build its own connections and construct its own theories. Her mind will fill in any blanks like eyes fill in blind spots, choosing the most logical explanation for anything she can't explain, until things come flooding back in again. Until someone pulls the trigger.

The Doctor buries her thoughts of neon gardens and his breathing goes ragged as he hides her memories of dancing in a ballroom, of running through cobblestone streets and stealing a kiss in the rain.

Swallowing painfully, he leans down until his forehead is pressed against hers. "I'm sorry I couldn't give you what you needed," he says, and his voice breaks on the words. "But I can at least give you this. You'll get this time back. When it's safe, you'll get it all back. When I tell you—"

The Doctor thinks of his other self drawing close to her on the beach, whispering something in her ear. He blinks and his cheeks are suspiciously wet.

"It'll still be me, Rose," he promises. "When I saw you running down that street, running towards me—that will always be one of the happiest moments of my very, very long life. Always. And that's the part of me that will stay with you. It'll still be me, telling you what you need to hear."

His eyes fall shut. "I'm sorry I couldn't tell you sooner. I would change it if I could. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Her consciousness begins to fade away, a light growing dimmer by the second. The Doctor presses a kiss to Rose's forehead, to her cheeks, to her lips. Her mouth moves against his, her lips soft and slow. But then the lights go out, and she doesn't respond at all.

The Doctor does one last sweep for anything suspicious. Satisfied, as much as he can be given the circumstances, he closes the link between them. Breathes deeply and picks up the pieces of his composure.

Rose sways forward when he moves away, unsteady on her feet, and he catches her. Cups her face in his hands while he looks her over, to make sure she's all right. Her eyes are closed, but her breathing is steady, her pulse strong. She'll wake up in a few moments with no memories of their time together since she landed in 2006, no remembrances of her time with this version of him at all.

He is content, however grimly, that he was able to do this small thing for her, without worsening things even further. Rose will lose very little of her memory in the end, will gain almost all of it back one day. And time is intact, its irrefutable points safe and fixed and sound. He has performed his duty, and performed it hatefully, admirably well. They both have.

(It isn't much of a relief; he would much rather she stayed here, with him, selflessness and the end of the universe be damned. But she made her choice. And he will choose to honor it.)

Soon enough, Rose will start to stir, awakening, and she'll open her eyes and wonder why the Dimension Cannon brought her right here, right now. The TARDIS will be gone by then. But the Doctor waits with her in the meantime, while her defenses are down. Wrapping his arms tightly around her shoulders, he tucks his chin against her head. To anyone passing by on the street outside, they could be any normal couple, taking a moment for themselves away from the bustle. Sharing a sweet kiss, or maybe a tender farewell.

He leaves as soon as her consciousness flickers again.

(He doesn't say goodbye.)

* * *

He is dying, and he has run out of time.

It's rather a self-indulgent little trip he takes, visiting all of his companions from the last few years. People have found joy in their lives, written books or had children or married and moved on, or will soon do so, and he's glad to see it, glad to help where he can. The Doctor figures he deserves this little bit of secondhand happiness; he earned it, with his oh-so-noble self-sacrifice and all.

(All he can say is, at least it was his choice, in the end. But people like Wilf make that choice an easy one.)

Ever-helpful, the TARDIS takes him everywhere he wants to go, everywhere he's needed, running down the list of beloved companions and heartsbreaking silent farewells until there's only one left.

The Doctor almost doesn't try to see her; he can't think of any opportunities he didn't seize, any stone he left unturned. It would be too dangerous to cross his own timeline a third time. And it almost seems sacrilegious, somehow, going back to see her yet again when the circle of their time together is so firmly, neatly closed.

Golden light pulses dimly, burning in his veins as his hands hover over the control desk. The last two times this happened, she was with him. Seems just a tad anticlimactic, somehow, if he doesn't see her for a third time. Right? Like an incomplete pattern, an unfinished thought, a discontented asymmetry.

So he tells the TARDIS to take him to London, 2005.

(There are worse things to be than a little sacrilegious.)

And there she is, in the crisp wintry English night; she stands in front of him in the snow, blonde hair and broad grin and just a little too much eye makeup. Rose Tyler, here, in this universe, smiling over at him in a pink hat and long scarf like nothing in the world could ever be wrong.

He can't help it. He smiles back. It's a fitting reward.

They've both earned it.


	7. Epilogue

It's completely an accident, the last time it happens.

(He's nearly a thousand years old, after all; Time Lord or not, a bloke's bound to forget a few paradoxes, isn't he?)

"Are you sure this is the right place?" Amy asks, frowning. She glances about the wood, sunlight streaming through the white-and-silver leaves, painting her face in dappled shadows. "This doesn't look like Neptune, the year 398099. Or not how I expected it to look, anyway."

"It doesn't, does it?" the Doctor replies, kicking at the dry leaves scattered on the ground. "That's because it isn't."

"Neptune, or the year 398099?"

"Either," the Doctor says cheerfully.

He pauses for a moment, having a think. He licks his finger and holds it up to the wind. "Actually, no, wrong again, it is the year 398099, it's just entirely the wrong planet in entirely the wrong quadrant."

"Oh, is that all?" Amy asks, her voice dry with sarcasm.

The Doctor waves her off dismissively. "Not to worry! It might be wrong in almost every conceivable sense of the word, but there's still something to do here; I'm certain of it."

He takes off in a random direction, striding with purpose, tweed jacket flapping in the breeze. Amy follows after him.

"Absitively posolutely," the Doctor says, resolute. "There's something to do in nearly everyplace; it's simply a matter of finding out what."

He scans the landscape while they walk; this place is riddled with a feeling of déjà vu, nagging at the back of his head, but he can't quite figure out what it is, or why his time sense is pinging like that.

"There's something," he mutters. "Something or somewhere or somewhen or someone—"

"There's someone," Amy says, pointing up ahead.

The Doctor follows the line of her finger, claps his hands together when he sees the Someone up ahead through the forest. They're partially turned away, their head bent down as they look at something in their hand—probably a mobile device of some sort, they're all the rage in these millennia—but it's definitely a Someone, not a Something (or, for that matter, a Nothing; nasty little buggers, those).

"Right you are! See? There's someone! Maybe they can turn things around," the Doctor says, doubling his speed. "They'll let us know if there are any good revolutions to join or feuds to settle or give us directions to Neptune or a rock quarry or a good nearby ice cream place or oh my god that's Rose that's her that's Rose that's Rose Tyler that's oh good Heavens," he babbles in a sentence that somehow took on a life of its own.

Because it takes his brain a shockingly long time to catch up to his eyes and his mouth, because the closer they get to the Someone, the more he is able to triangulate, between the height and the species and that exact shade of bottle-blonde, who exactly that Someone is.

He doesn't even realize that he stopped in his tracks until Amy thuds into him from behind.

"Oi," she says, pushing him away. "Who's what, now?"

"That," the Doctor replies, pointing, but additional words fail him. Amy, with her inferior human eyesight, won't be able to tell the details from here, but as the figure turns her head, the Doctor catches sight of her profile, and he would recognize it anywhere, from any distance. Those eyelashes and that upturned nose and those sweetheart lips and suddenly he's remembering a revolution, and an extra trip here, and a stolen hug, and he thought the air tasted like one of the terraformed Keplers, he really did, but he's sort of stupid sometimes.

"That's Rose Tyler," he says, a once-familiar warmth blossoming in his chest.

Amy looks from him to the figure in the distance, arching an eyebrow in confusion. "Okay. Cool. Rose Tyler. Nice name. Are we gonna go talk to her, or—?"

"Oh, no," the Doctor interrupts, though he smooths down his hair and adjusts his jacket and bowtie all the same. "Most definitely not. That would be a bad idea. Very, very bad. Well, I mean, it's a good idea, but no matter how you do it, a poor execution. Any kind of in-person talking or interacting is out of the question. It would end quite badly."

"Like, ex-girlfriend badly, or time-and-space-go-boom badly?"

"Yes," says the Doctor absently.

Brow furrowing, Amy fixes him with a piercing look.

"Anyway, best to go before she notices anything!" the Doctor exclaims, grabbing Amy by the hand so he can pull her back the way they came.

"Really? You're just going to leave her here, all alone?" Amy asks, shooting a glance over her shoulder as they half-walk, half-run away. "You're not even going to say hello?"

"No, ta! Like I said, too dangerous. Already learned that lesson the hard way once, not in any great rush to do it again, and even if it would be lovely, I simply can't take the risk, not even to say—"

The Doctor screeches to a halt again and Amy crashes into him from behind, again, her body slamming into his with a force that would knock the air out of his lungs if he was paying attention. She staggers back, muttering under her breath, but the Doctor doesn't catch any of her words. He's too busy thinking.

He grins. He's still an idiot.

"What now?" Amy asks. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he says, eyes darting back and forth but not particularly registering anything in front of them. "Nothing's wrong, just thinking thoughts that are too big for thinking and walking at the same time. Know what I mean?"

"Not usually, no," Amy replies, but he can hear the smile in her voice.

The last piece falling into place, the Doctor turns back to look at Amy, finds her watching him expectantly.

"Sorry," he says. "I need to make a phone call."

* * *

He uses Martha's old mobile, finds it still buried in one of his bigger-on-the-inside pockets.

"Hello—?"

"He loves you," the Doctor says softly.

Silence greets him from the other end. He hears her quiet intake of breath, knows her mouth has fallen open in surprise. The Doctor can only imagine Rose is looking around, like maybe, if she tries, she'll spot this mystery caller lurking somewhere nearby.

He wishes he could see her face right now.

"He'll never say it," the Doctor continues. "That is, he won't say it until it's much too late. I'm sorry."

Still, nothing from the other end. But he doesn't let that stop him.

"It's all right if you ask him anyway; he needs to be put on the spot sometimes. Actually, he needs to be put on the spot for this conversation to even happen, so. Goodness, time travel is fun, isn't it?"

The Doctor sighs. His time sense murmurs in the background; he's pushing things. He needs to be careful.

"Look. The fact is, he's too much of a coward when it comes to this sort of thing. Always has been. Lived too long, seen too much, lost even more. I could offer all sorts of excuses, but in the end, it doesn't really matter. Some things do need saying. And he loves very deeply, if not very well. And I thought—"

Shaking his head, the Doctor chuckles. Rose must think she's speaking with a madman right now. (She is, of course, speaking with a madman with a box, even if she doesn't quite know it.)

"Well, I just sort of thought you should know," he says. "That he loves you."

The other end is quiet, still. He imagines she's thinking right now, or maybe realizing. When she speaks again, she does so in a tone that suggests she already knows the answer.

"Who is this?" she asks.

The Doctor can just make out the sounds of the TARDIS landing in the background. He smiles.

"Goodbye, Rose Tyler."


End file.
